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This is the story of a courtroom drama about a courtroom drama. Ravi Batra, a New York attorney, has brought a $15 million legal action against the makers of the America television programme Law and Order. He claims that a lawyer portrayed in the drama, Ravi Patel, is by name and appearance clearly based on him but casts him as a corrupt lawyer bribing a judge.

There are only 20 lawyers in America with the first name Ravi. In real life Ravi Batra was named in a corruption scandal but not charged. He says the television drama implied that he was guilty.

The essence of most defamation cases is that the claimant argues that something portrayed as fact is really just a fiction. In this case, however, the claimant argues that something in fiction is being publicised as if it were a fact.

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One precedent on a similar point was from 1983 in New York: Springer v Viking Press. An appeal court dismissed the case of a woman who sued a publisher when a chapter of a book contained a character with her name, who lived in her street, but who was described as a “whore” who engaged in “abnormal sexual practices”. Lisa Springer, a Columbia University tutor, failed in her $20 million law suit based on the book State of Grace, written by her former lover Robert Tine.

The court ruled that to show defamation the description of the fictional character must be so close to the real person that a reader would have no difficulty linking the two. Lisa Springer said the book character “Lisa Blake” was like her physically and, like her, spoke French fluently and loved to ski. But, in something of an arch distinction, the court noted that while Lisa Springer was a tutor, Lisa Blake was independently wealthy.

Allowing Mr Batra’s case to proceed to the next stage of litigation, though, Justice Marilyn Shafer said that the earlier unsuccessful case was distinguishable from the current one because unlike Lisa Springer, Mr Barta was a “public figure”.

English cases such as this are rare but one of note came in 2000 when Keith Laird sued Channel 4 over an episode of its television programme Phoenix Nights. The programme featured a character called "Keith Lard". Like Keith Laird, Keith Lard was a fire officer in Bolton, and had a bushy moustache and a bright yellow jacket. Lard used the same mannerisms as Laird and the same expressions such as: "It's not fire that kills, it's ignorance." Mr Laird was taunted by Bolton council workers who assumed the television character was based on him. But in something of an embellishment, Lard was shown as having a penchant for sexually interfering with dogs. When Laird's colleagues started calling him "woof woof", he called a solicitor. The programme makers eventually agreed to pay £10,000 compensation.

Professor Slapper is Director of the Centre for Law at The Open University. His recent book How the Law Works is published by HarperCollins

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