A federal court has made a defamation claim in a lawsuit against Netflix over its depiction of a woman depicted as a stalker in Richard Gadd's film. Little reindeerwhile denying the other accusations.
U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner on Friday found that Netflix may have defamed Fiona Harvey, the inspiration behind Jessica Gunning's Martha depicted as a stalker twice sentenced to five years in prison for sexual assault, by saying the series was “based on a true story. Netflix may have “insisted on adding” the disclaimer despite Gadd's concerns, the court said.
“This suggests reckless negligence in verifying whether the statements in the series were false,” the order reads.
Little reindeer follows Gadd's Donny Dunn, a struggling comedian who meets Martha at the bar where she works. It then turns out that Martha is a dangerous serial stalker. Over the course of several years, she was described as having sent him more than 41,000 emails, 744 tweets, 100 pages of letters and 350 hours of voicemails.
In June, Harvey filed a lawsuit in California federal court against Netflix seeking at least $170 million, including the company's profits from the series.
Netflix moved to dismiss the lawsuit under California's anti-SLAPP law, which allows early dismissal of lawsuits intended to chill free speech. The court, however, found that Harvey has a “chance of prevailing” on the defamation claims.
Claims for negligence, right of publicity and punitive damages were dismissed, while claims for intentional infliction of emotional distress were allowed.
The series depicts Martha as a convicted criminal who spent five years in prison for stalking Gadd and another woman. He is also shown stalking a police officer and sexually assaulting Gadd. Harvey, whose real name was not used in the series, said she had never been convicted of any crime.
The lawsuit alleged that Netflix “did literally nothing” to substantiate the claims of the series, which is portrayed as a true story, about Harvey.