Netflix Faces Invasion of Privacy Suit for Outing Fertility Doctor’s Secret Children in ‘Our Father’ Documentary
Netflix has reinvented television largely due to true crime. But the genre has also created a lot of work for the streamer’s legal team.
For every hit like “Baby Reindeer,” “Making a Murderer” or “Inventing Anna,” there are real people who feel wronged by their portrayal and sue for defamation.
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The latest case offers an unusual twist.
Three women are suing Netflix in federal court over “Our Father,” a 2022 documentary about Donald Cline, an Indiana fertility doctor who secretly fathered 94 children.
The women do not claim that Netflix got anything wrong. Instead, they are suing for “public disclosure of private facts,” arguing that the documentary outed them as Cline’s “secret children.”
The First Amendment generally gives publishers wide latitude to say true things. But there is a narrow slice of true information that is so personal that it is illegal to disclose. Judge Richard Posner defined such information in a 1993 case as “intimate physical details the publicizing of which would be not merely embarrassing and painful but deeply shocking to the average person subjected to such exposure.”
Such details can still be published if they are newsworthy. In 1976, the Des Moines Register published a story about an 18-year-old woman who was sterilized against her will while confined in a county home. The Iowa Supreme Court found that the article — which identified the woman by name — was protected speech because forced sterilization was a matter of “legitimate public concern.”
Netflix argued that the same logic applied in the case of “Our Father.”
The story began when several adults in Indiana discovered they were half-siblings after sending DNA samples to 23andMe. They discovered that Cline was their biological father, and that they had many more half-siblings. Two of them alerted the local media, and the case drew wide attention when it was first reported in 2015. The case resulted in the passage of state laws criminalizing “fertility fraud.”
Several of the siblings were later contacted by a documentary producer, who wanted them to participate in the film. Given the sensitivity of the case, he promised that they would not be identified without their permission.
Eight of them ultimately agreed to be interviewed for “Our Father,” along with three of Cline’s patients, all of whom signed waivers.
When it was released, the film also included shots of the 23andMe website, which listed the names of three women who had not agreed to go public. In effect, the film revealed that they, too, were Cline’s children. Two of the women’s names were also included in the trailer for the documentary.
The women sued in 2022, alleging that the unauthorized disclosure caused them “reputational injury, distress, embarrassment and emotional trauma.”
Netflix sought to throw out the suit. But in a summary judgment ruling made public on Oct. 8, Judge Tanya Walton Pratt allowed two of the women to proceed to trial.
The judge wrote that Netflix failed to blur the women’s names “despite knowing that Plaintiffs wished to remain anonymous and recognizing the harm that the disclosure of their identities might cause.”
Netflix argued that the names were presented only fleetingly, but also that it was important to present such details to drive home “the effect Dr. Cline’s actions had on real people.”
Pratt rejected that defense, finding that the women’s privacy interests outweighed the newsworthiness of their identities.
“The method by which Defendants intruded on Plaintiffs’ privacy allowed hundreds of millions of people worldwide to see their names in the Trailer and in the Film,” the judge wrote. “This is not a case in which Plaintiffs’ names were clearly needed to lend credibility or authenticity to the Film’s story.”
The judge also found that the story involved precisely the sort of highly intimate information that can create harm if exposed. She cited Netflix’s internal communications and marketing materials, which described the story as “super creepy,” “chilling,” “nightmarish” and a case where “real life feels exactly like a horror movie.”
Netflix had argued that the women failed to keep their identities a secret because they sent their DNA samples to 23andMe, joined a private Facebook group for Cline’s secret children and posted on Instagram about the case.
The judge was unpersuaded by that argument for two of the women, finding that they had an expectation of privacy when posting in a closed Facebook group, and had not revealed enough in public to link them to the case.
But she did find that a third woman had taken additional steps to publicize her relationship to the case. The woman identified herself as among Cline’s secret children to Angela Ganote, the Indianapolis reporter who broke the story, and to Kate Hudson’s sibling-themed podcast. She had also wished her siblings — “all 75+ of you!” — a happy National Siblings Day using her private Instagram account. Because of that, the judge dismissed her claims, finding she had not kept the secret.
The judge allowed the other two women to pursue their claims at trial, and to seek punitive damages. The women initially filed the lawsuit under pseudonyms. But while the case was pending, a precedent was issued that required them to reveal their names publicly to continue the suit. They did so.
Netflix declined to comment on the ruling.
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