‘The Pitt’ producers urge California appeals court to reject ‘ER’ lawsuit

Filed 11h ago · Via Courthouse News · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Jorge Royan · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

A California appeals panel heard arguments Tuesday over whether ‘The Pitt’ can be sued by Michael Crichton's estate, which claims the medical drama was lifted from ‘ER’ after licensing talks collapsed in 2023.

Attorney Theodore Boutrous called the show ‘lightning in a bottle’ and argued its real-time single-shift structure makes it wholly original, while conceding an earlier version was pitched as an ‘ER’ spinoff before the estate withheld approval.

Estate attorney Robert Klieger countered that producers simply renamed Dr. Carter as Dr. Robby, moved the setting from Chicago to Pittsburgh, and kept the same cast and crew from the abandoned spinoff talks. One judge noted that surface differences don't settle whether the underlying similarities count as derivative.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

You can call a thing lightning in a bottle all you want, but if the bottle used to have somebody else's name on it, people are going to ask questions. Changing a doctor's name and a city skyline isn't exactly starting from a blank page. This one's headed for a jury to sort out what 'original' really means when the receipts show ten months of negotiating first.

Source: Read the original at Courthouse News → Scored: Barroom Ballet · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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