Liberal media darling John Oliver and the production company behind his show, Last Week Tonight on CBS, were the recipients of a defamation complaint in the United States Southern District of New York, last Friday. The 23-page complaint alleged that Oliver and his producers “knowingly manipulated” the sworn testimony of Dr. Brian Morley, who was the medical director of Iowa’s Managed Care Organization dealing with their Medicaid program, “and then knowingly manipulated the context” of the testimony, effectively lying about it to millions of people around the globe.
The alleged defamation occurred in an episode of Last Week Tonight which aired on April 14, 2024. In the episode in question, Oliver was railing against the Medicaid systems in red states as he pushed for America “to adopt a universal healthcare model” like the one in his failing home country of Britain, which he left.
According to the complaint, Oliver falsely portrayed Morley, who “is a board certified physician, having served in the United States Army as a field surgeon and practiced family medicine,” as a heartless healthcare executive who was okay with disabled patients sitting and stewing in their own excrement:
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.
“Defendants’ false accusations were designed to spark outrage, and they did,” the filing went on. It noted that Oliver shared his own outrage at what he purported were Morley comments. “Fuck that doctor with a rusty canoe. I hope he gets tetanus of the balls,” he declared, seemingly promoting a violent sexual assault of Morley.
The filing contended “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,” and that Morley’s comments were stitched together to form a Frankenstein’s Monster against him.
In the segment in question, Oliver tugged on the heartstrings of viewers by telling the story of a kid named Louis who had home care visits temporarily cut; Louis had a mental disability, was confined to a wheelchair (as was his mother), and he needed help cleaning himself.
Oliver played a soundbite of Morley’s testimony before a Medicaid hearing, which he claimed was about a “similar patient” to Louis, and was accompanied by an on-screen graphic showing the purported quote:
People have bowel movements every day where they don’t completely clean themselves, and we don’t fuss over [them] too much. People are allowed to be dirty … You know, I would allow him to be a little dirty for a couple of days.
Following the soundbite, Oliver declared: “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 shit on them for days.” He then admitted that “we got the full hearing” but “I’m not going to play it for you.” “I’m just gonna tell you: [Morley] said it, he meant it,” Oliver claimed.
The reason Oliver probably didn’t want to share Morley’s full comments was because what the show was claiming was apparently a lie. According to the filing, the below comment was what got chopped up by Oliver’s producers, and which “was in reference to the average individual who is independently mobile but may not wipe perfectly—not someone who is wearing diapers or otherwise laying in their own bowel movements”:
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.
Elsewhere in Morley’s testimony, he explained why cleaning an immobile patient was so necessary for their wellbeing:
If feces were left on the skin for an extended period of time in someone that’s totally immobile, you can get significant skin breakdown. But if feces are left on the skin for several hours, or even a day, and the feces are removed the next day in someone that’s mobile and is not confined to a bed, then it would just be a matter of washing the feces off.
The filing notes that the hiring reaffirmed Morley’s chosen course of care as completely legal, contrary to Oliver’s suggestion.
Dr. Morley was contacted by a producer prior to the airing of the show; when he asked them if they had the full hearing available to them, they confirmed it him.
As spelled out in the filing, Oliver’s producers knew that the “Actual Patient” Morley was talking about in the hearing (name omitted from the filing for confidentiality) bore no resemblance to Louis’s situation:
Defendants knew, contradicted, and otherwise failed to disclose that Louis was not “similar” to the Actual Patient in any material sense.
(…)
Defendants knew, contradicted, and otherwise failed to disclose that that the Actual Patient was not confined to a wheelchair, was not incontinent, did not wear diapers, independently toilet transferred, was independently mobile, could change his or her own clothes, bathed him or herself, and did not require in-home diaper changing or assistance to bathe generally.
Arguing that actual malice existed in the case (something needed for a punitive damages reward), Morley partially pointed to the manipulation of his quote:
Defendants additionally published the False and Defamatory Statements and Meanings negligently and with actual malice because they manipulated the sole source quote attributed to Dr. Morley to make it mean something it did not mean and otherwise manipulated the evidence and context to make it seem condemnatory, when it was not.
Morley was demanding a jury trial and the damage were “an amount to be determined.”
