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An Indiana jury on Thursday ordered Netflix to pay $385,000 to a woman who was outed as a child of notorious fertility doctor Donald Cline in a documentary about the case.
The woman, Lori Kennard, was one of three “secret children” who sued the streaming service in 2022 after their names were displayed on screen in “Our Father.” The film explored how Cline secretly fathered 94 children, which came to light decades later when some of them sent DNA samples to 23andMe.
After a four-day trial in federal court in Indianapolis, the jury ruled in favor of Kennard on Thursday evening. The eight-member jury refused to grant any damages to another plaintiff, Sarah Bowling. The claims of the third woman were dismissed before trial.
The women sued for “public disclosure of private facts,” alleging that they suffered emotional distress and were fearful of social consequences due to their paternity being revealed.
Popular on Variety “This is a precedential result,” said Robert MacGill, the plaintiffs’ attorney, on Friday. “The jury verdict confirms how Americans are protected against invasions of privacy by filmmakers.”
Netflix has argued that the women’s names appeared only fleetingly, and that they had given up their claim to privacy by joining a closed Facebook group for Cline’s secret children and by posting about the case on social media.
The jury’s verdict indicates that it found that Kennard had kept her connection a secret, but that Bowling had not.
The plaintiffs’ attorneys argued that the producers understood the sensitivity of the case, and had promised not to disclose anyone’s identities without their permission. The lawsuit accused Netflix and RealHouse — the documentary arm of Blumhouse Productions, which produced the film — of recklessness and negligence in failing to blur out the women’s names.
In a ruling in October, Judge Tanya Walton Pratt allowed Kennard and Bowling to proceed to trial and pursue punitive damages. But after hearing testimony this week, the judge decided that RealHouse and Netflix had taken reasonable steps to vet the film for legal issues, and that the failure to hide the women’s names was essentially an honest mistake.
Therefore, Pratt ruled that the plaintiffs could get only compensatory damages, and not punitive damages. That was a win for Netflix, which could have been on the hook for millions of dollars. Netflix continues to stand by the film and believes that, with all things considered, the verdict was a favorable result.
Netflix had also argued that the documentary was protected by the First Amendment, but the judge rejected that, ruling that the women’s names were not sufficiently newsworthy to overcome their privacy interests. MacGill argued that the case establishes that other reality-based productions could also face liability for privacy violations.
