MIAMI (Legal Newsline) – Netflix wants a federal judge to throw out a lawsuit that alleges it of defamation because of how immigration and detention centers are portrayed in the show Messiah.
The show is a fiction “indisputably protected by the First Amendment,” Netflix’s attorneys wrote Aug. 3 in a motion to dismiss the lawsuit filed by GEO Group, a company that makes and manages detention facilities for local, state and federal governments.
GEO says its portrayal in Messiah accuses it of treating immigrants in inhumane ways by using scenes of an immigrant detention facility in which guards and vehicles have GEO’s trademarks and name.
“While Plaintiffs present the Court with cropped, enlarged and touched up images plucked out of context from Messiah, and have filed with the Court annotated versions of the episodes with bright red ‘LOOK HERE’ arrows, conceding the ‘blink-and-you’ll-miss-them’ nature of the disputed images, the GEO name is, in fact, never uttered once in the episodes,” the motion to dismiss says.
“Simply put, a barely legible ‘GEO’ patch on a costume shoulder patch, or an image of a vehicle with ‘GEO’ parked in a parking lot in a fictional work is not actionable.”
Netflix is also filing an Anti-SLAPP motion, a tool for defamation defendants to cut off lawsuits early by urging a judge to rule the speech was protected by the First Amendment.
GEO says it is accused of depriving immigrants of beds, sunshine and educational opportunities.
“Unlike in Messiah, GEO does not house people in overcrowded rooms with chain-link cages at its facilities, but provides beds, bedding, air conditioning, indoor and outdoor recreational spaces, soccer fields, classrooms, libraries and other amenities that rebut Messiah’s defamatory falsehoods,” the lawsuit says.
Netflix broadcast these misrepresentations with actual malice, says the lawsuit, which was filed in Miami federal court.