The Pitts and ER are similar enough that Michael Crichton’s widow’s trial can proceed, court rules | The Pitt

Pitt is similar enough to ER to allow Michael Crichton’s widow to pursue a long-running lawsuit over the award-winning medical drama, a US appeals court has ruled.

In a unanimous opinion filed Wednesday, a three-judge panel rejected the appeal of Warner Bros. Television (WBTV), which has argued for two years that the shows are unrelated.

“There are many similarities between The Pitt and ER,” the court ruled, citing the fact that both shows take place in an emergency room and feature “often incomprehensible” medical jargon, overlapping seizures and graphic depictions of injuries. “The doctors and nurses are exhausted; there are explosions of emotion,” we read in the judgment. “Each one includes a young doctor, fresh out of medical school and incompetent.”

The defendants – WBTV, as well as John Wells, executive producer of The Pitt and former showrunner of ER; his company John Wells Productions; actor Noah Wyle, who starred in ER and The Pitt; and R Scott Gemmill, who served as executive producer and writer on a number of episodes of ER and is now showrunner and executive producer of The Pitt – had argued that these elements were “generic similarities” common to “any dramatic story involving emergency doctors” and that it “can’t be that every show set in an emergency room is derived from ER.”

But on Wednesday, the court ruled: “We find that the details here are sufficient to establish a prima facie case.” »

The case will now go to a jury trial in Los Angeles unless the parties reach a settlement.

Author and screenwriter Crichton is the creator of ER, based on a film script he wrote about his experiences as a medical student. His 1994 contract for ER with WBTV included a “frozen rights” clause, which blocked any spin-offs or reboots of his work without his approval. Crichton died in 2008.

His widow, Sherri Crichton, filed her suit in August 2024, five months before the debut episode of The Pitt. She alleged that The Pitt was an unauthorized ER reboot and accused Wells of “personal betrayal.”

The appeals court ruled Wednesday that WBTV must go to trial, but dismissed Wyle, Wells and Gemmill as defendants, finding no evidence that any of them were aware that they might be violating Crichton’s contractual rights by creating The Pitt.

Wyle, Wells and Gemmill all acknowledged in interviews that The Pitt was created because the ER reboot failed to get off the ground, but only because they had already come together to make a medical drama about the experiences of health care workers during the pandemic.

“We were going to go into an ER reboot that didn’t come to fruition,” Wyle said on Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast, adding that because they had come together to plan this show with HBO Max, “we were then allowed to really accelerate the development process (of The Pitt) because of this void that we created from the near miss.”

Wyle described not having to reboot ER as liberating, saying, “Once we broke away from that IP, it suddenly liberated the storytelling. It wasn’t about ‘who will we see again’ and ‘what have they done’. It’s about ‘what are the issues of the day’ and ‘what’s the most compelling way to convey them’… (it) allowed us to reframe it and modernize it, without having to to pay tribute to the road traveled.

WBTV has filed a motion to dismiss Sherri Crichton’s lawsuit under California’s Anti-Slapp law, which aims to stop baseless lawsuits that restrict free speech. But Judge Wendy Chang denied that motion in 2025, ruling that Sherri Crichton had enough evidence to proceed.

“I am deeply pleased with the Court of Appeal’s decision and look forward to having our case, which affects writers, creators, their families and their estates, presented to a jury,” Sherri Crichton told Variety on Wednesday.

The Guardian has contacted WBTV for comment.

The Pitt won 12 Emmy Awards, two Golden Globes and a Peabody over two seasons, with Wyle winning several best actor awards for his portrayal of Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, a grizzled attending physician working in a Pittsburgh emergency department. Over the course of 11 seasons of ER, Wyle played Dr. John Carter, a wealthy young doctor working in an underfunded emergency room in Chicago.

The third season of The Pitt will begin airing in January.