SALEM — Lynnfield resident John B. Wilson, who has been charged in connection with a college admissions cheating scandal, has filed a lawsuit against Netflix, alleging defamation in the way he was portrayed in a documentary released by the streaming service.
Wilson, his wife Leslie Wilson, and their son, John B. Wilson, Jr., are listed as the plaintiffs in a civil complaint filed in Essex Superior Court on Tuesday.
The complaint alleges that there is “nothing fair or accurate about how the Wilsons are portrayed” in the “Varsity Blues” documentary, which was released on the popular streaming service on March 17 and explores the college admissions scandal that captured national attention and led to the prosecution of several wealthy people, including actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman.
Wilson has pleaded not guilty to charges filed against him in federal court in Boston that are still pending as he awaits trial. The complaint stated that Wilson pleaded not guilty “because he is innocent.”
Wilson is accused of paying more than $1.7 million to scheme mastermind Rick Singer to help get his three children into Stanford, Harvard and the University of Southern California.
The lawsuit alleges that the documentary published statements concerning the Wilson family that Netflix “knew to be false, recklessly disregarded their falsity, or should have known to be false in the exercise of reasonable care. These statements are defamatory,” the complaint said.
The complaint states that the defendants’ actions “held Wilson up to public scorn and ridicule and destroyed (the family’s) good name and reputation,” and that the Wilsons “have suffered, and continue to suffer substantial harm and damage.”
Specifically, the plaintiffs asked the court to call on Netflix to issue “public apologies and retractions” and are seeking monetary damages and such other relief stemming from their portrayal in the documentary.
The plaintiffs allege they have already been subjected to “multiple instances of unfair and inaccurate reporting about the case.” But as a result of the broadcast, “they have been forced to endure the ultimate destruction of their reputations in the eyes of more than 200 million global Netflix subscribers.”
The complaint alleges that the Wilsons, through their attorney, Howard M. Cooper of Todd & Weld LLP, informed Netflix representatives in writing prior to the broadcast of certain exculpatory facts surrounding the charges and the family should not be grouped with those who pleaded guilty.
The “production lumps the Wilson family in with other defendant parents, all of whom have already admitted to wrongdoing” despite the fact that Wilson is the only parent featured in the documentary who has pleaded not guilty and intends to prove his innocence at trial, the lawsuit claims.
The complaint alleges that Wilson was deceived by the “confessed felon” and “highly skilled con artist” behind the ‘Varsity Blues’ scandal — Singer.
The plaintiffs allege that at least nine reenactments of calls between Singer and Wilson failed to mention any exculpatory facts. Nor did the documentary mention that Wilson had voluntarily submitted to a two-day polygraph test, “which he passed uniformly,” a result that was revealed to defendants in the March 5 letter, according to the complaint.
The Wilsons claim they were not portrayed accurately or fairly in the documentary and the defendants “made no effort in the documentary to distinguish the Wilson family circumstances from the scores of defendant parents who pled guilty.”
The complaint also noted that the letter included “publicly available supporting documentation” for a number of exculpatory facts (including the polygraph) and further warned the defendants that reenactment of any recorded calls shown without reference to those facts would be “highly misleading to the audience and defamatory of the Wilson family.”
Among the exculpatory facts cited by Wilson are that Wilson’s children were highly-accomplished students who were academically and otherwise qualified to be admitted to the schools in question, unlike “most of the children of the other defendant parents,” the lawsuit said.
The complaint alleges that John Wilson, Jr. was a skilled athlete in water polo, while Wilson’s daughters tested in the 99th percentile on college entrance exams, but that none of that was included in the documentary.
The complaint also stated that the defendants failed to delay the release of the documentary in order to include such exculpatory facts regarding the family’s involvement with Singer and that the broadcast “has caused irreparable damage to (the Wilsons’) reputation in the community.”
The defendants have until Aug. 4, 2021 to file a response to the family’s complaint.
Efforts to reach John B. Wilson were unsuccessful.