Netflix and Ava DuVernay settle defamation lawsuit over ‘When They See Us’

Netflix’s “When They See Us”

Netflix

Netflix and Ava DuVernay settled a lawsuit brought by a former New York City prosecutor who claimed she was defamed because of her performance in When they see usa dramatized miniseries about the Central Park Five case.

As part of the deal, Netflix will move a disclaimer from the credits to the start of each episode. “Although the film is inspired by real events and people, certain characters, incidents, locations, dialogue and names are fictional for dramatization purposes,” the disclaimer states.

The agreement, announced Tuesday, comes as the trial was scheduled to begin next week.

“The parties announce that they have resolved this lawsuit,” Netflix, DuVernay and Linda Fairstein, the former prosecutor, said in a joint statement. “Netflix will donate $1 million to the Innocence Project. Ms. Fairstein will not receive any money under this settlement.

Throughout the series, Fairstein is portrayed as the face of an unscrupulous criminal justice system determined to secure convictions against five Harlem teenagers accused of raping Trisha Meili, a white jogger in Central Park. She is depicted as ordering police officers to harshly interrogate the boys, in violation of their constitutional rights, and ultimately coercing them into confessions that landed them in prison. In 2020, she filed a defamation suit in a lawsuit claiming certain plot points were reverse engineered to falsely attribute actions, responsibilities, and viewpoints to her that were not true.

The case has been closely watched by industry insiders because of the impact it could have had on the artistic freedoms granted to creatives overseeing content that chronicles real-life events.

Last year, the court hearing the case made a crucial ruling when it sided with Fairstein on summary judgment, allowing the lawsuit to proceed to trial. U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel ruled that five scenes could be defamatory. “A reasonable jury could conclude, based on clear and convincing evidence, that the decision to make Fairstein “the face” of the system and the central “bad guy” caused the defendants to act with actual malice by recklessly imputing to Fairstein conduct that is not substantiated by the perpetrators. substantial body of source materials,” the order states.

Kara Gorycki, Fairstein’s attorney, said in a statement: “We sincerely hope that this settlement serves as a wake-up call to Netflix and other media companies that they have a responsibility to demonstrate fairness to the truth when they represent real human beings and should not try to take advantage of people’s completely false nastiness, as they did in Linda’s case.”

In an allegedly defamatory scene, Fairstein’s character, played by Felicity Huffman, orders an army of New York City police officers to be sent to Harlem. “All the young black men who were in the park last night are suspected of raping this woman who is now fighting for her life,” she said. “You go into these projects and you arrest every little thug you see. Bring all the kids who were in the park last night.

In another, Fairstein’s character is accused of coercing confessions that resulted in convictions for the group. “You knew you coerced these boys into saying what they did,” another prosecutor told him.

Fairstein sought damages of up to $8 million. She also requested a court order requiring Netflix to remove the allegedly defamatory scenes and to place, among other things, a disclaimer at the beginning of each episode.

In a statement, Fairstein said she pursued the lawsuit to restore “the historical facts that the villainous caricature invented by the defendants and depicted on screen was not me.” She was dropped by her literary agency and by the publisher of her detective novels after the series began.