Netflix is studying that careless dialogue in its fictional reveals can have severe implications. Its bid to get a latest defamation go well with dismissed has been rejected, which means it should face the plaintiff — Georgian chess legend Nona Gaprindashvili — in courtroom.
In September, Gaprindashvili filed a suit in opposition to the streaming large, accusing the corporate of defamation and “false light invasion of privacy.” As the world’s first female grandmaster, Gaprindashvili was talked about in Netflix’s collection The Queen’s Gambit — a interval drama a few chess prodigy.
In one scene during a chess match, a radio commentator says in passing “The only unusual thing about her, really, is her sex. And even that’s not unique in Russia. There’s Nona Gaprindashvili, but she’s the female world champion and has never faced men.”
According to the go well with, not solely is the allegation that Gaprindashvili hadn’t confronted males at the moment “manifestly false,” it is also “grossly sexist and belittling.” It states that “By 1968, the year in which this episode is set, she had competed against at least 59 male chess players (28 of them simultaneously in one game), including at least ten Grandmasters of that time.”
Stanley Sherman by way of Getty Images
The present relies on a 1983 novel by Walter Tevis that additionally mentions Gaprindashvili. However, the half which Netflix seems to have primarily based this specific little bit of its script on says, “The only unusual thing about her was her sex; and even that wasn’t unique in Russia. There was Nona Gaprindashvili, not up to the level of this tournament, but a player who had met all these Russian Grandmasters many times before.” Netflix’s model is clearly completely different.
The streaming supplier had moved to strike the case in November, saying in its submitting that “the Series is a fictional work that a reasonable viewer would not construe as conveying fact.” It additionally stated that “a reasonable viewer would not draw the negative implication that Plaintiff alleges.”
However, US District Judge Virginia Philips denied that movement at present, writing that “the fact that the Series was a fictional work does not insulate Netflix from liability for defamation if all the elements of defamation are otherwise present.”
The ruling additionally states that “at the very least, the line is dismissive of the accomplishments central to Plaintiff’s reputation.” It additionally factors out that, when submitting its movement to dismiss, “Netflix’s own evidence demonstrates knowledge of the truth in its choice to deviate from the text of the Novel, which states that Plaintiff had faced the male Russian Grandmasters ‘many times before.'”
Gaprindashvili is searching for damages of no less than $5 million, in addition to for Netflix to take away the assertion that she by no means performed males from the present.
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