A judge in Delaware has dismissed a lawsuit filed against Showtime over the limited series “George & Tammy” and its portrayal of the late George Richey, who was married to Tammy Wynette after her divorce from George Jones. In tossing the suit out, the judge ruled that, whatever merits there might be to the complaints of the plaintiff, Sheila Slaughter Richey, there was no basis for including Showtime Networks in the suit at all, let alone as the sole defendant.
The suit had claimed that George Richey was disparaged and made into the villain of “George & Richey.” Judge Stephanos Bibas did not take issue with that characterization made by Sheila Slaughter Richey’s lawyers, and he dismissed it without prejudice, meaning it could be refiled. But his ruling said essentially that the plaintiff’s beef was solely with Georgette Jones, the daughter of George Jones, who was not named as a defendant, and not with Showtime.
“Normally, a plaintiff who cries unjust enrichment must have actually enriched somebody,” Bibas wrote in his judgment. “Sheila Slaughter Richey alleges that (1) Georgette Jones breached a contract with her, and (2) the breach helped Showtime make a hit TV show. So Sheila sued Showtime for unjust enrichment. But she has not alleged that she enriched Showtime. And she does not meet an exception that would let her skirt this requirement. So I dismiss her claim.”
When “George & Tammy” premiered in December 2022, it became the most-watched premiere in Showtime’s history. Its subsequent four Emmy nominations included nods for stars Jessica Chastain and Michael Shannon. Steve Zahn played George Richey.
The Richey family contended that the miniseries violated a non-disparagement agreement that Georgette Jones had made with Sheila Slaughter Richey. Jones was the author of the 2011 book “The Three of Us: Growing Up with Tammy and George,” which was picked up as a source book for the Showtime film. In 2015, Sheila Slaughter Richey had asked for redress from Georgette Jones over statements made in the book and its promotion about George Richey, and a settlement was reached in 2019, which Richey’s lawyers said involved Georgette agreeing not to make further disparaging statements. They maintained in the suit that Georgette violated the terms of that settlement not just by doing interviews about the miniseries but by aiding and encouraging Showtime in presenting a deeply unflattering portrait of George Richey.
But Bibas said that the plaintiff did not establish that Showtime knew about the settlement until Georgette Jones informed the network about it shortly before “George & Tammy” was released. The judge allowed that the suit could be refiled if Richey’s attorneys could show that the network knew about the agreement while the project was still being produced.
“In April 2022, Sheila’s lawyer sent a letter to the series’ actors, producers, writers, and showrunner,” Bibas wrote, “along with Showtimes’s parent company, warning them that Georgette had signed a non-disparagement agreement, and threatening to sue. Unimpressed, Showtime released the show a few months later. The series was called ‘George & Tammy,’ and it was indeed unflattering to Richey. It showed Richey encouraging Wynette’s painkiller addiction; implied that he had staged break-ins at her home to gull her into thinking that she needed his protection; showed him physically abusing Wynette and his prior wife, including by punching the prior wife in the face; and hinted that Richey had destroyed Wynette’s will so that he would inherit her estate. These were, to say the least, ‘statements… that… criticize[d]… George Richey. And Georgette was involved with the show, causing Sheila to suspect that she had ’cause[d] or encourage[d]’ these criticisms in violation of the non-disparagement agreement.”
So, Bibas continued, “Sheila could have sued Georgette for breaking their agreement. But ‘George & Tammy’ had been a hit, and Showtime had presumably profited handsomely from Georgette’s breach. So instead of going after Georgette for whatever damages her breach caused, Sheila set out for bigger game” in suing Showtime as sole defendant.
“I must take the complaint’s nonconclusory allegations as true and draw all plausible inferences in Sheila’s favor,” the judge wrote. “Even so, Delaware law does not support Sheila’s claim for unjust enrichment…” The ruling notes that the suit could have plausibly been filed in either New York, Texas or Delaware — which is Showtime’s place of incorporation — but that it hadn’t been fully established which state’s laws apply. But under his state’s laws, Bibas found, “To allege a relationship between Showtime’s enrichment and Sheila’s impoverishment, Sheila would ordinarily need to claim that Showtime was enriched by her. She has not done that…”
The judge continued, “Nor did Sheila own the story that Showtime used. The network’s right to turn George and Tammy’s story into a TV show came from the First Amendment and from buying the rights to dramatize Georgette’s book. So Showtime did not exploit Sheila’s property rights by making the series. If anyone enriched Showtime here, it was Georgette. She wrote the book on which the series was based, she transferred the book’s rights, and (I must presume at this stage) she violated the non-disparagement agreement by dishing details that made for juicier TV. So maybe Sheila could sue Georgette for breach of contract. But she cannot sue Showtime for unjust enrichment.”
Bibas further noted that the series’ showrunner started working on the adaptation when the book was published in 2011, and a movie based on the book was announced in 2016, at which point Showtime could not have known of a non-disparagement agreement that didn’t exist till 2019. Even after that, the judge said, there’s no evidence in Richey’s claim that Showtime was aware of the agreement while the miniseries was being made. “But because I dismiss without prejudice, I leave the door open for her to allege that Showtime was still making the show when it got her letter,” he added. But for present purposes, the judge said, “Sheila cannot argue that because Georgette knew she was breaking an agreement, Showtime knew it too.“
Showtime Networks was represented in the case by Davis Wright Tremaine in New York and Young, Conaway, Stargatt & Taylor in Delaware. Richey was represented by Bellew LLC of Delaware and Hemmer Wessels McMurtry PLLC of Kentucky.
