MIAMI (Legal Newsline) – An apparent settlement has been reached in a defamation lawsuit against Netflix that sought $50 million lawsuit over the portrayal of immigration and detention facilities depicted in the series Messiah.
On May 1, the GEO Group - which manages them for local, state and federal governments - voluntarily dismissed its lawsuit, with prejudice. This came not long after Netflix complained it couldn't get access to the company's facilities in order to refute claims GEO Group made that its reputation had been irreparably harmed by the show.
The streaming service had filed objections to a recent discovery dispute ruling that prevented Netflix from entering buildings managed by plaintiff GEO Group, which claimed in its defamation lawsuit that Messiah unfairly portrays the living conditions inside them.
GEO said 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.
Netflix argued Messiah is a fiction “indisputably protected by the First Amendment.”
“(P)laintiffs refuse to allow Netflix to test the alleged ‘real life’ conditions of their facilities as alleged in the complaint,” the objections, filed April 27 in Miami federal court, say.
Netflix was unhappy with a magistrate judge ruling that prevented it from seeking documents that could possibly challenge the “curated, glossy photos of (conspicuously) unidentified, uninhabited facilities” in the complaint.
“Plaintiffs have yet to produce a single photograph of actual conditions in any facilities while in operation,” the objections say.
The magistrate’s ruling said Netflix is not entitled to the scope of discovery it sought.
“Netflix is not entitled to conduct discovery into any other conditions and, thus, not entitled to probe GEO’s supposed ‘world class’ reputation and goodwill, even though Plaintiffs clearly intend to use their own self-serving ‘evidence’ of their reputation to support their (nonexistent) damages,” the objections say.
“This is not the law. Nor can it be, as discovery is far broader and extends to all relevant information. Discovery into the ‘real conditions’ of GEO facilities will vitiate the very basis for their damages claim.”