10 TV Scenes That Led To Massive Lawsuits
4. Claiming Andrew Colborn Framed Steven Avery - Making A Murderer
Few documentary series in recent years have made as much of a tectonic impact as Netflix's Making a Murderer, which is at least partly responsible for ushering in our present fetishistic obsession with true crime documentaries.
In 2018, shortly after the series' conclusion, one of the officers investigating Teresa Halbach's murder, Andrew Colborn, filed a defamation suit against Netflix and the show's directors.
Colborn claimed that the series slanderously implied that he had framed Steven Avery, the currently-incarcerated man convicted of Halbach's murder, and who the show argues has been falsely imprisoned.
The suit claims that Netflix "omitted, distorted, and falsified material and significant facts in an effort to portray plaintiff as a corrupt police officer who planted evidence to frame an innocent man... in order to make the film more profitable and more successful."
Surprisingly, Colborn didn't ask for compensation but simply clarification in the documentary itself of his role in events.
Though Netflix tried to have the suit dismissed, a judge upheld earlier this year that it could indeed proceed. And so, we await the outcome.