The 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 on Wednesday, a three-judge panel denied an appeal from Warner Bros Television (WBTV), which has argued for two years that the shows are unrelated. But on Wednesday the court ruled: “We find the details here suffice for a prima facie case.” The suit will now go to a jury trial in Los Angeles, unless the parties reach a settlement.
The author and screenwriter Crichton was the creator of ER, which was 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” provision, which blocked any spin-offs or reboots of his work being made without his approval. His widow, Sherri Crichton, filed her suit in August 2024, five months before the first episode of The Pitt debuted.
She alleged that The Pitt was an unauthorised ER reboot, and accused Wells of “personal betrayal”. The appeals court ruled on Wednesday that WBTV must go to trial, but dismissed Wyle, Wells and Gemmill as defendants, finding no evidence that any of them were aware they could violate Crichton’s contractual rights by creating The Pitt. Wyle, Wells and Gemmill have 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 workers during the pandemic.
Wyle described not having to do the ER reboot as freeing, saying: “Once we uncoupled ourselves from that IP, it suddenly liberated the storytelling. It wasn’t about ‘who do we see again’ and ‘what have they been up to’. It’s ‘what are the issues of the day’ and ‘what’s the most cogent way to put them across’ … [it] allowed us to reframe and kind of modernise it, and not have to pay any homage to travelled road.” WBTV had filed a motion to throw out Sherri Crichton’s lawsuit under California’s anti-Slapp statute, which is intended to stop meritless lawsuits that curtail freedom of speech.
But the judge, Wendy Chang, denied that motion in 2025, finding that Sherri Crichton had enough evidence to proceed. The Guardian has contacted WBTV for comment. The Pitt has won 12 Emmys, two Golden Globes and a Peabody over two seasons, with Wyle winning multiple best actor awards for his performance as Dr Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, a grizzled chief attending doctor working in a Pittsburgh emergency department.
On 11 seasons of ER, Wyle played Dr John Carter, a rich young doctor working in an under-resourced emergency department in Chicago. Season three of The Pitt will start broadcasting in January.
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