Unreported / Non-Citable
Background
Roadrunner JMTC LLC, successor to Michael Crichton's rights in the television series ER and controlled by Sherri Crichton, sued Warner Bros. Television (WBTV) and several other defendants involved in producing The Pitt. Roadrunner alleged that after negotiations over an ER reboot failed, defendants went ahead with The Pitt, which it called 'ER 2.0.' The complaint asserted that The Pitt breached the 1994 Agreement between Crichton and Warner Bros., whose 'frozen rights' provision barred sequels, remakes, spin-offs, and other derivative works based on ER without mutual agreement among Crichton, Amblin, and Warner Bros. The claims were breach of contract and breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing against WBTV, and intentional interference with contractual relations against the remaining defendants.
Defendants filed a special motion to strike under Code of Civil Procedure section 425.16. The parties agreed the first anti-SLAPP prong—protected activity—was satisfied, so the dispute concerned the second prong, whether Roadrunner showed minimal merit. The trial court denied the motion, relying in part on extrinsic evidence about the meaning of 'derivative works,' and defendants appealed. On November 5, 2026, the Court of Appeal filed an order modifying its November 4, 2026 opinion by replacing a citation on page 32, expressly stating there was no change in the judgment.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeal reviewed the anti-SLAPP ruling de novo. It held the trial court should have sustained objections to the Katz declaration because a drafter's undisclosed subjective understanding is irrelevant to the objective meaning of a written contract, and should have sustained objections to the Leavitt declaration because the challenged material was not proper custom-and-practice evidence on the meaning of the frozen rights clause. The Rodman declaration, by contrast, was admissible expert evidence on the extrinsic comparison of the two shows.
Even adopting the more stringent copyright-law meaning of 'derivative,' the court held Roadrunner made a prima facie case that The Pitt is substantially similar to ER under both the analytical-dissection and selection-and-arrangement approaches, drawing every legitimate inference in Roadrunner's favor. The shared protectable elements included the emergency-room setting, very fast pacing, jargon-laden rapid-fire dialogue, overlapping patient crises, graphic injury depictions, exhausted staff, and a young incompetent doctor. The court therefore affirmed denial of the anti-SLAPP motion as to WBTV, including the contract-based claims.
As to the other defendants, the court reversed. Roadrunner failed to make a prima facie case of intentional interference with contract because, apart from Wells and JWP on the knowledge element, the evidence did not show the defendants knew enough about the specific contractual obligation and intended to disrupt it; the trial court was instructed to grant the motion and dismiss those defendants. The November 5, 2026 modification order changed only the page 32 citation and did not alter the judgment.
Key Takeaways
- The anti-SLAPP denial was affirmed as to WBTV because Roadrunner made a prima facie case that The Pitt is a derivative work of ER under the copyright meaning of the term.
- The court rejected reliance on a drafter's undisclosed understanding of a contract term, holding that objective meaning controls and the Katz declaration should have been excluded.
- Expert testimony comparing the two series was admissible and supported a prima facie showing of substantial similarity under both Ninth Circuit approaches.
- The intentional-interference claim failed as to the non-WBTV defendants because Roadrunner did not show they knew enough about the specific contractual obligation and intended to disrupt it.
- The November 5, 2026 order modifying the opinion replaced only a page 32 citation and expressly left the judgment unchanged.
Why It Matters
The decision illustrates how anti-SLAPP review separates admissibility of contract-interpretation evidence from the plaintiff's burden to show minimal merit, and it confirms that a prima facie derivative-work case can rest on substantial similarity under either Ninth Circuit test without resolving the subjective intrinsic test, which is reserved for the trier of fact.
The companion modification order is narrow: it corrects a citation in the unpublished opinion and does not disturb the affirmed-in-part, reversed-in-part judgment or the dismissal instructions for the non-WBTV defendants.