After five years of legal battles, Netflix, former Manhattan prosecutor Linda Fairstein, and the creators of the docuseries 'When They See Us' have reached a settlement in Fairstein's defamation lawsuit.
- June 5, 2024
AceShowbiz - After five years of legal battles, Linda Fairstein has settled her defamation lawsuit against Netflix, director Ava DuVernay, and co-writer Attica Locke. The settlement comes just days before the case was set to go to trial.
As part of the settlement, Netflix has agreed to donate $1 million to the Innocence Project. Fairstein will not receive any money as part of the settlement. Additionally, a disclaimer stating that "While the motion picture is inspired by actual events and persons, certain characters, incidents, locations, dialogue, and names are fictionalized for the purposes of dramatization," will be placed at the beginning of the docuseries.
Fairstein stated that the lawsuit was not about "winning" or money, but about setting the record straight and defending her reputation. She claimed that the docuseries portrayed her as a "villainous caricature" that was not true.
Ava DuVernay, who directed and co-wrote the series, reacted to the settlement by claiming that Fairstein had her husband call to "pull the plug" on the lawsuit just days before trial. She alleged that Fairstein did not want to face a jury's scrutiny of her conduct and character.
Fairstein's lawyers defended their client, arguing that she had stood up against a powerful media company and that the settlement should serve as a wakeup call to media companies about their responsibility to truthfully portray real people.
The lawsuit stemmed from Fairstein's portrayal in "When They See Us", a docuseries about the Central Park Five, who were falsely prosecuted and later exonerated for the rape and assault of a white woman jogger in New York City. Fairstein, as the top Manhattan sex crimes prosecutor at the time, was depicted in the series as a racist and unethical prosecutor who orchestrated the convictions of the five innocent men.
Netflix maintained that the depiction was "substantially true" and that the creative process allowed for some "leeway" in dramatization. However, a judge rejected this argument, ruling that a jury could reasonably find the filmmakers' actions to be defamatory.
The settlement brings an end to a lengthy and contentious legal battle that has drawn attention to the boundaries of fictionalizing real-world events in media.
