Here’s a motto to live by: don’t do your job in such a way that John Oliver would devote a segment to it on Last Week Tonight. Regrettably, Dr. Brian Morley did not heed these words. A year ago, Last Week Tonight aired a main story about Medicaid fraud. Part of the story focused on patients being forced from Medicaid to managed care organizations (MCOs), and the ways MCOs find to stop providing coverage they deem too expensive (regardless of the need). In that reporting, Oliver quoted Dr. Morley from a 2017 hearing in which the doctor offered his opinion on cleanliness standards, specifically as it would apply to a patient seeking in-home care. Oliver confirmed that he had seen the testimony in full, so as to verify the context, and then proceeded to offer his own inimitable, colorful opinion on the doctor’s words. Now Dr. Morley is suing Oliver and his producing team for at least $75,000-worth of defamation… for quoting Dr. Morley’s own words. Read them and judge for yourself:
“Defendants falsely told millions of viewers of their show, Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, that Dr. Morley testified in a Medicaid hearing that ‘he thinks it’s okay if people have sh*t on them for days,’ intentionally leading viewers to believe that Dr. Morley made these alleged statements about — and illegally denied Medicaid services to — a young man who has severe mental impairment, was harnessed in a wheelchair, wears diapers, and required in-home bathing and diaper changing because he could do neither himself,” reads a jury-seeking lawsuit against Oliver and Last Week Tonight producers Partially Important Productions.
Filed last week in New York federal court, the complaint from Dr. Brian Morley, the ex-medical director of health insurance corporation AmeriHealth Caritas adds of the April 14, 2024 Last Week Tonight episode examining Medicaid fraud and Managed Care Organizations: “Defendants’ false accusations were designed to spark outrage, and they did. The false accusations Defendants made were so heinous that John Oliver felt justified in telling his millions of viewers: ‘f–k that doctor with a rusty canoe. I hope he gets tetanus of the balls.’ Oliver’s feigned outrage at Dr. Morley was fabricated for ratings and profits at the expense of Dr. Morley’s reputation and personal well-being.”
…“Defendants knowingly manipulated Dr. Morley’s testimony and then knowingly manipulated the context in which they placed it such to convey the defamatory meaning,” the filing asserts, with receipts, as the kids say.
Potentially putting a First Amendment defense at risk for Oliver and Partially Important, said receipts in the filing include a screenshot from the episode of Morley’s remarks at the hearing.
On the show, Oliver exclaimed: “Look, I’ll be honest, when I first heard that, I thought that had to be taken out of context. There is no way a doctor, a licensed physician, would testify in a hearing that he thinks it’s okay if people have sh*t on them for days. So, we got the full hearing, and I’m not gonna play it for you, I’m just gonna tell you: he said it, he meant it, and it made me want to punch a hole in the wall.”
And here is Dr. Morley’s full quote, that his own lawyers included in the suit filing:
“In certain cases, yes, with the patient with significant comorbidities, you would want to have someone wiping them and getting the feces off. But like I said, people have bowel movements every day where they don’t completely clean themselves and we don’t fuss over too much. People are allowed to be dirty. It’s when the dirty and the feces and the urine interfere with, you know, medical safety, like in someone who has concomitant comorbidities that you worry, but not in this specific case. I would allow him to be a little dirty for a couple days.”
How can this doctor possibly think that seeing the entire statement exonerates him? Or explains the context? The context is the same! He’s saying it’s A-OK for people to go a few days with feces unwiped from their bums, including those who are physically unable to clean themselves. I rewatched the clip (it starts around the 19:30 mark), and the only possible misunderstanding Dr. Morley could argue is that Oliver covers a specific person whose case Dr. Morley did not literally testify about. But in introducing Dr. Morley, Oliver clearly says the upcoming statement was made about a “similar” case, not the one they’d just shown. Sure, the disclaimer goes by quickly, but it is most definitely there. Given the intimate, if much-aggrieved, relationship Oliver has had with his lawyers throughout the 10+ years of Last Week Tonight, I have faith in his team that they wouldn’t have aired the segment exactly as they had, if it hadn’t been thoroughly vetted. So take a seat, Doc. And wipe your damn ass!