this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2026
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The Pitt and ER are similar enough for lawsuit to proceed, judge rules (www.bbc.com)
submitted 4 days ago by Stamau123@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world
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US drama The Pitt is similar enough to medical series ER for a lawsuit against its producers to progress, a court in the US has ruled.

The widow of Michael Crichton, who created ER, argues The Pitt is effectively a reboot of the series, which has been made without proper permission or credit.

Sherri Crichton says her husband's contract included a "frozen rights" provision that prohibited any spin-offs, sequels or reboots of ER being made without his express consent.

A three-judge panel said there are "clear and numerous similarities between The Pitt and ER," which means the case can go ahead. Warner Bros previously described the lawsuit as "baseless" and sought to have it dismissed.

Listing the similarities between the two shows, the court cited the emergency room setting, the fast pace, use of medical jargon, graphic depictions of injuries, and younger doctors fresh from medical school being trained.

"We find the details here suffice for a prima facie case," the judges said.

It means the case will now go to a jury trial in Los Angeles Superior Court.

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[–] keckbug@lemmy.world 13 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Nothing of the sort was ruled. There hasn’t been any substantial proceedings at all. The only thing that has been decided is that there is enough of a plausible claim to proceed with a case.

Perhaps there is nothing there but an ER-based medical drama featuring a common actor and some common show runners and staff. Perhaps discovery will uncover some damning evidence of (surprise) TV evecs being shitty people and trying to screw over creators of an IP.

Time will tell

[–] CrimeIsLegalNow@ani.social 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Legal Eagle has video on it from a couple months ago.

tl;dr the most damning evidence to the layman is they actually approached the estate about a reboot/spinoff that fell through before all of a sudden the Pitt happened

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Yeah but if that's the entirety of their evidence they're going to have to really hope that they've got something in Discovery. Because I can totally envision and utterly innocent series of events that would also result in The Pitt coming about.

  1. Old producers of ER are looking for some work so they approach about doing a reboot.
  2. Talks begin but ultimately fall through and the show never gets created.
  3. The producers are there for still looking for a new show to do so start to come up with their own IP.
  4. Given that they have history in the medical industry it makes sense to make another show based in the medical industry. It's not like there going to do a period piece or anything.
  5. They write an original IP story based in the medical industry.
  6. They pitched it, and it gets produced. One of the benefits being that it is original IP, and they don't have to give any credit to anyone and therefore the show is cheaper to produce.

A logical series of events that lead to a similar show being produced after engaging with talks to produce a reboot of the show ER, but all totally innocent and not evidence of IP theft.

[–] CrimeIsLegalNow@ani.social 0 points 3 days ago

This might surprise you but I didn't sum up a multi-million dollar court case in a couple sentences