A federal courtroom has superior the important thing defamation declare in a lawsuit in opposition to Netflix over its portrayal of a lady depicted as a stalker in Richard Gadd‘s Child Reindeer, whereas dismissing different allegations.
U.S. District Decide R. Gary Klausner on Friday discovered that Netflix might’ve defamed Fiona Harvey, the inspiration behind Jessica Gunning’s Martha depicted as a twice-convicted stalker sentenced to 5 years in jail for sexual assault, by stating that the collection was “primarily based on a real story.” Netflix could have “insisted on including” the disclaimer regardless of Gadd’s considerations, the courtroom mentioned.
“This implies a reckless disregard of whether or not the statements within the collection have been false,” the order acknowledged.
Child Reindeer follows Gadd’s Donny Dunn, a struggling comic who encounters Martha on the bar the place he works. Martha is then revealed to be a harmful, serial stalker. Over the course of a number of years, she’s depicted as sending him greater than 41,000 emails, 744 tweets, 100 pages of letters and 350 hours of voicemails.
In June, Harvey introduced a lawsuit in California federal courtroom in opposition to Netflix searching for at the least $170 million, together with the corporate’s earnings from the collection.
Netflix moved to dismiss the lawsuit beneath California’s anti-SLAPP legislation, which permits for the early dismissal of lawsuits supposed to relax free speech. The courtroom, nevertheless, discovered that Harvey has a “chance of prevailing” on allegations over defamation.
Claims for negligence, proper of publicity and punitive damages have been dismissed, whereas a declare for intentional infliction of emotional misery was allowed to proceed.
The collection depicts Martha as a convicted prison who spent 5 years in jail for stalking Gadd and one other lady. She’s additionally proven to stalk a policeman and sexually assault Gadd. Harvey, whose actual title wasn’t used within the collection, has maintained that she’s by no means been convicted of any crime.
The lawsuit alleged Netflix “did actually nothing” to substantiate statements within the collection, which is represented as a real story, regarding Harvey.