Defamation Lawsuit Against Netflix Moves Forward, Judge Shoots Down 1st Amendment Pleas
Just how all-encompassing is literary license?
According to Delaware Chief Judge Colm F. Connolly, it has its limits — and Netflix appears to have run afoul of them.
The streaming and entertainment titan saw a defamation lawsuit against it move forward after Connolly ruled that the Netflix miniseries “Inventing Anna” may have very well taken creative liberties too far, per Variety.
The 2022 miniseries, created by Shonda Rhimes, is a dramatization of the real-world trial and controversy surrounding conwoman Anna Sorokin.
In the Netflix show, Rachel DeLoache Williams is depicted as a key player in Sorokin’s downfall. Williams, portrayed by actress Katie Lowes in the show, is shown to have both abandoned Sorokin in Africa and turned her in to the authorities.
In the real world, Williams is vehemently fighting against these depictions.
Those depictions of Williams include disparaging mannerisms, which she complained about in the defamation lawsuit. She accused Netflix of portraying her as “snobbish,” “unethical” and “greedy.”
Furthermore, Williams’ suit complained that Netflix had turned a real-life villain in Sorokin into a cinematic anti-hero. That, in turn, flipped Williams from alleged victim to nemesis.
(Williams claims that Sorokin defrauded her out of $62,000.)
According to Variety, Netflix, in an attempt to get this lawsuit dismissed, argued that it had First Amendment protections.
“Indeed, to allow constitutionally-protected artistic expression to flourish, content creators like Netflix must be allowed some breathing space to interpret the actions and decisions of those involved in a public controversy like the Sorokin trial,” Netflix’s lawyers argued, adding that the miniseries’ depiction of Williams was immune from defamation claims because it’s an opinion.
Connolly disagrees.
In fact, without even looking at all of Williams’ complaints, the judge determined that certain events — like the aforementioned abandonment in North Africa — were not a matter of opinion, so therefore the suit should move forward.
Sorokin, for the unaware, rose to infamy in the mid-2010s thanks to her alter ego of Anna Delvey. Posing as a socialite and heiress, she defrauded a number of financial institutes, banks and others to the whopping tune of $275,000.
In 2019, she was sentenced to four to 12 years in prison.
While it remains to be seen what will happen with the lawsuit moving forward, the entire ordeal may bring into question the future viability of the “creative non-fiction” genre.
Can Dick Cheney get something from the 2018 dramedy “Vice“?
Or, perhaps more interestingly, what will happen to slanted documentaries?
It’s well-known at this point that a number of former teammates aren’t enamored with their portrayals in the Michael Jordan-centric docu-series “The Last Dance.” Do they now have some avenue of setting the record straight?
The end result of this defamation lawsuit could go a long way to answering all of those questions.
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