A US-based judge has ruled that Fiona Harvey’s £132m case against Netflix drama Baby Reindeer can be pursued on the grounds of defamation after the show was wrongly billed as a “true story.”
Judge Gary Klausner noted that the show’s opening episode begins with the line “This is a true story,” which he said allows viewers to take the subsequent story as factual. He added that while Harvey’s “purported actions are reprehensible,” those depicted in the show are worse than what Harvey was accused of in reality.
The hit Netflix drama follows the story of creator Richard Gadd who is being stalked by a character called Martha, allegedly based on Harvey. In the series Martha sexually assaults Gadd and is later convicted for stalking. Harvey claims that she has not been convicted of a crime.
“There is a major difference between stalking and being convicted of stalking in a court of law,” the judge wrote.
Klausner continued that the series made “no effort” to fact check or disguise the identity of Harvey, who was quickly discovered online after the series aired in April this year. While she was never named in the series, she was identified via social media posts.
Harvey is now seeking over $170m (£132m) in damages, suing for defamation, negligence and privacy violations.
In his defence, Gadd has outlined that he did report Harvey to the police and that she received a harassment warning but was not criminally sentenced. Further, he has said that the Netflix show was not supposed to be a “beat-for-beat recounting” but rather a fictionalised retelling.
Netflix’s motion to have the case dismissed has now been denied.
In June, a spokesperson for Netflix said that the company intended to “defend this matter vigorously and to stand by Richard Gadd’s right to tell his story.”
This month, Netflix unveiled that Baby Reindeer writer Gadd had agreed a first-look deal with the streaming service in a multi-year deal which will focus on scripted series.
A version of this story first appeared on Screen’s sister site Broadcast
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