The Second Appellate District reversed a judgment. The court held that the plaintiffs in this action had no probability of prevailing on a defamation action arising from the fictional portrayal of two characters on television, despite various general similarities between the characters and the plaintiffs and despite the fact that the published draft version of the television script used the plaintiffs’ names as the characters’ names.
After having unremarkable business dealings with realtors Scott and Melinda Tamkin, a married couple, television script writer Sarah Goldfinger wrote a script for a popular CNS evening television show which involved married realtors, both of whom were involved in various unsavory activities and one of whom committed suicide. In the script, the surviving spouse was suspected of having murdered the decedent. In Goldfinger’s original draft, the realtors were named Scott and Melinda Tamkin, after the realtors Goldfinger had previously had dealings with. Beyond that, although there were various similarities between the real and fictional couple, they were apparently coincidental.
