A recent New York case, Greene v. Paramount Pictures Corp., arising from the Martin Scorsese film “The Wolf of Wall Street,” discusses a nuance in defamation law known as libel by fiction. This claim seem like an oxymoron, because libel requires false statements presented as facts, not fiction. It arises when a fictional work portrays a character in a negative manner that is based on the personality or physical characteristics of the plaintiff such that people who know the plaintiff will believe the plaintiff to be the basis for the fictional character. This thereby links the plaintiff with sufficiently negative characteristics to form the basis of a defamation claim. The film features a brokerage house, Stratton Oakmont, whose co-founders were arrested and incarcerated for securities fraud and money laundering. The plaintiff in the recent suit, Andrew Greene, a former lawyer at Stratton Oakmont, based his claims for alleged violation of the right of privacy and for…
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