John Oliver Sued For Defamation By Health Care Exec He Ranted About

John Oliver could find himself in the middle of a legal sh*t show if a health care executive takes the HBO host to trial for defamation.

“Defendants falsely told millions of viewers of their show, Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, that Dr. Morley testified in a Medicaid hearing that ‘he thinks it’s okay if people have shit on them for days,’ intentionally leading viewers to believe that Dr. Morley made these alleged statements about — and illegally denied Medicaid services to — a young man who has severe mental impairment, was harnessed in a wheelchair, wears diapers, and required in-home bathing and diaper changing because he could do neither himself,” reads a jury-seeking lawsuit against Oliver and Last Week Tonight producers Partially Important Productions.

Filed last week in New York federal court, the complaint from Dr. Brian Morley, the ex-medical director of health insurance corporation AmeriHealth Caritas adds of the April 14, 2024 Last Week Tonight episode examining Medicaid fraud and Managed Care Organizations: “Defendants’ false accusations were designed to spark outrage, and they did. The false accusations Defendants made were so heinous that John Oliver felt justified in telling his millions of viewers: ‘fuck that doctor with a rusty canoe. I hope he gets tetanus of the balls.’ Oliver’s feigned outrage at Dr. Morley was fabricated for ratings and profits at the expense of Dr. Morley’s reputation and personal well-being.”

While the 23-page filing from Morley’s legal team Firestone Greenberger PLLC and Wade, Grunberg & Wilson LLC doesn’t specify damages (except to say “in an amount to be determined and in excess of $75,000”), it is clear they want to squeeze some big bucks out of Oliver and the production company.

Go to around the 19:30 mark in the episode below to see exactly what Morley is suing the sharp-witted Oliver for:

Contacted by Deadline, LWT broadcaster HBO, which isn’t a defendant in the suit, said it does not comment on pending litigation. Representatives for Oliver, who has been (often successfully) at the receiving end of more than a couple of lawsuits over the years since LWT debuted in April 2014, did not respond to request for comment.

While not unusual, their reactions are indicative of how careful HBO and Oliver want to be about what they say — because what Morley said in full during a more than three-hour 2017 hearing and the context in which what he said was uttered are at the core of this dispute.

“Defendant Partially Important has admitted that an individual producer or agent of Defendant Partially Important responsible for providing information about Dr. Morley for publication obtained and reviewed the entire Administrative Hearing and therefore had the knowledge and information alleged below, which reveals negligence, knowledge of falsity, and/or a reckless disregard for the truth on behalf of the organization,” the complaint states, noting a conversation Morley had prior to airing of the LWT episode last year with an unnamed senior news producer for the show. In that phone call conversation, the producer said he watched the full 2017 hearing, as an attorney for the defendants confirmed, according to the complaint.

Morley claims none of that matters because LWT sliced and diced what he said. “Defendants knowingly manipulated Dr. Morley’s testimony and then knowingly manipulated the context in which they placed it such to convey the defamatory meaning,” the filing asserts, with receipts, as the kids say.

Potentially putting a First Amendment defense at risk for Oliver and Partially Important, said receipts in the filing include a screenshot from the episode of Morley’s remarks at the hearing:

On the show, Oliver exclaimed: “Look, I’ll be honest, when I first heard that, I thought that had to be taken out of context. There is no way a doctor, a licensed physician, would testify in a hearing that he thinks it’s okay if people have sh*t on them for days. So, we got the full hearing, and I’m not gonna play it for you, I’m just gonna tell you: he said it, he meant it, and it made me want to punch a hole in the wall.” 

Someone may want to punch a hole in something because that LWT graphic and Oliver’s outraged remarks on the episode are followed in the complaint by the full 2017 quote, with its clear reference to past comments and dual medical conditions, from the former executive:

In certain cases, yes, with the patient with significant comorbidities, you would want to have someone wiping them and getting the feces off. But like I said, people have bowel movements every day where they don’t completely clean themselves and we don’t fuss over too much. People are allowed to be dirty. It’s when the dirty and the feces and the urine interfere with, you know, medical safety, like in someone who has concomitant comorbidities that you worry, but not in this specific case. I would allow him to be a little dirty for a couple days. 

Morley’s lawyers say that “in October 2024, Dr. Morley demanded that Defendants retract their False and Defamatory Statements.” Then, “In November 2024, Defendants refused to retract their False and Defamatory Statements,” adding, “The Episode remains available on HBO’s Max platform and on Last Week Tonight’s YouTube page.”

“Defendants published the False and Defamatory Statements and Meanings with common law malice, with the intent to injure and reckless disregard for the rights of Dr. Morley.” 

This is going to get messy.