Health Law Daily Wrap Up, GENERAL HEALTH CARE NEWS—S.D.N.Y.: TV program critique of MCO and its CEO was not defamation, (Jun 10, 2026)

By Jeffrey H. Brochin, J.D.

Content of national TV program which criticized MCO’s profit motive and high rate of denials of coverage, while quoting insensitive testimony by its CEO, were protected opinions or protected by the fair report privilege but did not rise to defamation.

A federal District Court in New York has granted the Motion to Dismiss filed by TV host John Oliver and production company Partially Important Productions, LLC (collectively Oliver) in a defamation lawsuit brought by Dr. Brian Morley (Morley) CEO of the Iowa MCO AmeriHealth Caritas (AmeriHealth or MCO.) The court found that Morley’s claims could not be sustained under either a theory of direct and express defamation, nor defamation by implication. Part of the TV episode at issue had a segment which criticized MCOs across the states and in Iowa—without mentioning Morley by name—and the other segments which mentioned him were protected opinions under New York’s fair report privilege (Morley v. John Oliver and Partially Important Productions, LLC ,No. 1:25-cv-02563-RA (S.D.N.Y. June 2, 2026)).

Last Week Tonight. John Oliver and Partially Important Productions, LLC, produce Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, a weekly television program broadcast on the HBO Max platform and published on YouTube. On April 14, 2024, Oliver aired a show focused on Medicaid which highlighted various flaws with the Medicaid system, including policy failures that lead Medicaid patients to lose their coverage. During the episode, Oliver began a roughly five-minute segment on MCOs and Medicaid privatization, explaining to viewers the profit motives of MCOs and mentioning problems that have arisen with MCOs in “state after state.” He specifically turned to Iowa and its 2016 decision to engage MCO AmeriHealth to run its Medicaid program.

Morley testimony. After describing a report from the Iowa State Auditor as to a “nearly 900% increase in members being illegally denied services or care” after AmeriHealth took over, Oliver introduced a video of Louis Facenda, an Iowan with cerebral palsy and significant mobility issues, who lost daily nurse visits, including in-home bathing and diaper changing, once the MCO got involved. Oliver then continued “Look that’s obviously maddening. And it doesn’t get any better when you hear a doctor at AmeriHealth, the CMO [sic] that took over in Iowa, explaining in a hearing about a similar patient, just what the corporate thinking was about the necessity of keeping people clean.” Oliver then played and displayed an excerpt of Morley’s testimony at a 2017 Medicaid coverage hearing where he stated: “People have bowel movements every day where they don’t completely clean themselves…People are allowed to be dirty…You know, I would allow him to be a little dirty for a couple of days.”

In expressing outrage at Morley’s testimony, Oliver characterized him as “thinking its ok if people have sh[*]t on them for days.” Morley then filed the instant lawsuit claiming he was defamed by Oliver.

Direct, express defamation. The court first examined whether the TV content constituted direct and express defamation, noting that express-defamation claims—unlike defamation-by-implication claims—concern direct statements about allegedly false statements of verifiable fact. The court must construe all allegedly defamatory words in the context of the publication as a whole, in the same way that the viewing public, acquainted with the parties and the subject would take them. In considering a claim for defamation involving a television show, words must be construed in the entire context of the program, including the audio and video mosaic, and “tested against the understanding of the average viewer.”

Morley cited the criticisms of MCOs’incentives—“a for-profit healthcare system”—as defaming him because he was an employee of the sole MCO identified later in the segment. However, the court disagreed, finding that the statement instead represented Oliver’s view of the motivation of MCOs generally. It was true that Oliver later homed in on Morley, but Oliver made the statement just after discussing coverage on a different channel of a wholly different MCO, Centene, and its former CEO. Morley’s claims based on another “cost cutting” example which referenced a different AmeriHealth patient, McDonald, this was still only reasonably be seen as an assertion of Oliver’s opinion that MCOs unfairly prioritize cost cutting, and the court observed that “speculating about motivations” and “imputing a motive or state of mind to a person based on that person’s publicly reported conduct” is not actionable in defamation.

Defamation by implication. The court next turned to Morley’s assertions that he was defamed by implication. Such a claim requires a showing that a combination of statements—though individually non-defamatory—nevertheless gave rise to a defamatory meaning. Morley urged the court to find that he plausibly alleged the segment was defamatory when considering the “juxtaposition”of his statements with Oliver’s statements and the other video clips. According to him the full segment “strung together” a mosaic of “successive statements,” which, even if individually were not defamatory, nevertheless painted a “false portrayal” of him and defamed him. However, the court disagreed, concluding that an ordinary or average viewer would not draw a defamatory implication from the segment, or the episode as a whole, and they therefore held that Morley failed to state a claim for defamation by implication.

Based on the foregoing, the court granted Oliver’s Motion to Dismiss.

The case is No. 1:25-cv-02563-RA.

Judge: Abrams, R.

Attorneys: G. Taylor Wilson (Wade, Grunberg & Wilson, LLC) for Brian Morley. Michael Louis Berry (Ballard Spahr LLP) for John Oliver.

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