A health-care executive has slapped Last Week Tonight host John Oliver with a lawsuit, alleging the comedian-turned-talk-show-host defamed him in a 2024 episode by twisting his words and making “false accusations.”
The episode in question, which aired in April of last year, linked Dr. Brian Morley, a hospital administrator and former medical director for AmeriHealth Caritas in Iowa, to a drastic decrease in Medicaid services and accused him of thinking “it’s OK if people have s–t on them for days.”
The complaint, filed late last week in the New York Southern District Court, claims that Oliver and his team “entirely snipped out of context and manipulated two sentences of Morley’s testimony” during an administrative proceeding so that they could “accomplish their defamation,” reports Entertainment Weekly.
Morley’s lawyers claim Oliver made “false accusations” about Morley that “were designed to spark outrage.” They said Oliver’s “feigned outrage” was “fabricated for ratings and profits at the expense of Dr. Morley’s reputation and personal well-being.”
In the episode, which is available on YouTube, Oliver explored the state of Medicaid in the U.S., digging into the cost-cutting measures healthcare companies were taking and whether they were at the expense of patients’ health.
While explaining the role of managed care organizations (MCOs), Oliver shared a 2018 news snippet about an Iowa cerebral palsy patient named Louis who was struggling after his in-home care program was disrupted following cuts to Iowa’s Medicaid services and an MCO got involved in his care.
Oliver cited the interview with Louis and his mother and primary caregiver, Joann, on the struggles people with disabilities in Iowa faced after the state moved to for-profit MCOs, which Louis said left him in dirty diapers for hours.
Oliver then shared audio of Morley talking about patient care from a 2017 administrative hearing. In the clip, Morley said: “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.”
This, according to the lawsuit, subsequently damaged Morley’s “reputation and personal well-being.” Morley “did not equate wiping poorly with leaving anyone sitting in their own feces for days,” and actually “testified to the opposite,” the lawsuit says.
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The lawsuit continues, arguing that Morley never said it is “‘okay’ or medically appropriate for individuals wearing diapers or who are otherwise immobile ‘to have s–t on them for days.’” It also says that Morley never said that it is “‘okay’ or medically appropriate for anyone to sit or lay in their own feces, for days at a time or otherwise.”
Rather, the suit argues, Morley’s intention was to explain that some patients “may not wipe perfectly,” but that “they’re mobile and they’re not laying in it.”
The suit says Morley’s “bowel movement” comments were made about a “hypothetical average person, who is independently mobile and can toilet transfer” but who might not have been able to clean themselves entirely after a bowel movement — a detail the episode did not disclose, Morley’s lawyers argue.
The complaint claims that Morley’s full, unedited quote during the testimony said, “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.”
During the episode, Oliver seemingly implied to viewers that his team had listened to the full testimony.
“I’ll be honest, when I first heard that, I thought — that has 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 s–t on them for days, so we got the full hearing,” Oliver said.
“I’m not going to play it for you. I’m just going to tell you: He said it, he meant it and it made me want to punch a hole in the wall,” he continued.
“The false accusations Defendants made were so heinous that John Oliver felt justified in telling his millions of viewers: ‘F— that doctor with a rusty canoe. I hope he gets tetanus of the balls,’” the complaint said.
Morley is demanding a retraction, removal of the episode from all platforms, and compensatory damages, special damages and punitive damages to be determined by a jury.
This is not the first time Oliver has faced a lawsuit.
In 2017, coal company CEO Bob Murray filed a suit against Oliver and his show after an episode called out Murray and his mining company for failing to protect the safety of his miners after one of his mines in Utah collapsed in 2007, killing six miners and three rescue workers.
He discussed ways Murray often mistreated his employees and described him as a “geriatric Dr. Evil.”
The defamation suit was eventually tossed out by a judge, who agreed with HBO’s argument that Oliver’s comments were either clearly satirical and protected under the First Amendment, or were factual and sourced from court documents.
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