Netflix
Justice may be blind, but it's hard to look away from the legal mess that “Love is Blind” has become.
Back in October, reality series contestant Tran Dang filed a lawsuit against the Love is Blind production companies Kinetic Content and Delirium TV for sexual assault, false imprisonment and negligence. Now season five contestant Renee Poche is suing Delirium and Netflix to stop a $4 million arbitration the producers brought against her in November over “some limited public statements about her distressing time on the show, including the “horrible experiences she had with Wall.”
Similar to what Dang claimed last year, Poche details what allegedly really happened behind the sordid scenes during her time on Love Is Blind.
“On her first night in Los Angeles, the show’s production staff confiscated Poche’s phone, passport and driver’s license,” today’s complaint says. “When Poche wasn't filming, she was locked in her hotel room and couldn't leave without a 'castwrangler' accompanying her. She was expressly forbidden from interacting not only with other participants, but also with random hotel guests and employees. In some ways, and this is shared by many participants, Poche felt like a prisoner.”
“This dispute is ripe for adjudication as Delirium has initiated arbitration proceedings against Poche for allegedly violating her unlawful nondisclosure agreement,” states the lawsuit, filed Jan. 2 in LA Superior Court by attorneys Bryan Freedman and Mark Geragos unenforceable and brings this action to enforce its legal rights under California law.”
The jury is seeking a judicial declaration that the NDA is “illegal, invalid and unenforceable,” as well as a handful of compensatory damages. (Read Renee Poche's employment law lawsuit against the producers of Netflix and Love is Blind here.)
Of course, since context is always at the forefront, it's important to consider Poche's actions and her legal team in the context of a spate of recent reality TV lawsuits from Bethenny Frankel and others seeking to lift the veil on how the drama was unscripted is really made – and it's not pretty.
“Love may be blind, but the studio and production lawyers who drafted these illegal contracts and the executives who covered them up were not,” attorney Freedman told Deadline this morning about his firm and Garagego’s latest lawsuit. “They knew exactly what they were doing by creating these illegal contractual provisions and secretly hiding the illegality to silence these participants,” the tall, peppy lawyer added. “It’s all part of the reality TV ecosystem.
“These agreements are used as swords to threaten people, to silence them, and also as shields to hide their illegality behind a signature and the attitude that they signed it,” Freedman continued. “Suing Renee for $4 million under an illegal damages clause when she earned a total of $8,000 is not only unconscionable, but will prove to be the mistake that opens Pandora’s box of reality television.”
With NBCU already backtracking on its reality TV NDAs for Bravo shows and others and promising to keep the unscripted series to a high standard, Freedman and Garagos' Poche suit could be the tip of the Sword of Damocles for producers and cable networks and streamers.”
“We have hundreds of customers standing by,” threatens Freedman.
Neither Netflix nor Delirium TV responded to requests for comment on Poche's lawsuit. If so, this post will be updated.