Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s company Artists Equity is the subject of a lawsuit alleging defamation against two Miami law enforcement officials who inspired the film The Rip.
According to a report by Entertainment Weekly, published on Saturday, May 9, Jason Smith and Jonathan Santana, two police officers from the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office, are suing the actors’ production company over their depictions in the Netflix movie, created by Artists Equity and released on January 16.
As the outlet pointed out, Smith and Santana are not mentioned by name in the film, but the lawsuit alleges that performances by Affleck, 53, and Damon, 55, were “so heavily associated with the two officers” that the film caused “substantial harm to their personal and professional reputations.”
Us Weekly has reached out to Artists Equity and representatives for Affleck and Damon for comment.
EW reported that the lawsuit — which seeks compensatory damages, punitive damages and attorney fees — is also the result of the film and its advertisements implying “misconduct, poor judgment and unethical behavior in connection with a real law enforcement operation.”
The lawsuit reportedly accuses “Damon’s LLC production company Falco Productions of defamation per se and defamation by implication.” The officers also claimed “intentional infliction of emotional distress.”
Damon and Affleck starred as Lieutenant Dane Dumars and Detective Sergeant JD Byrne, respectively, in The Rip. The film followed their journey after discovering $20 million of cartel cash and subsequently unearthing corruption within the Miami-Dade Police Department. As widely reported around the project’s release, the plot is based on the true story of Miami police officer Chris Casiano, who served as the head of the department’s Tactical Narcotics Team in 2016 when a cash stash was uncovered.
Smith and Santana’s lawsuit details that the pair themselves “seized more than $21 million in June 2016” as part of the event. The pair reportedly allege that “the film’s use of unique, non-generic details of the June 29, 2016, investigation, combined with its Miami-Dade setting and portrayal of a narcotics team, creates a reasonable inference that the officers depicted are Plaintiffs.”
The lawsuit also alleges that Smith and Santana’s lawyers sent the companies responsible for the film a letter “enumerating” the allegedly defamatory details in the movie and demanded that they cease and desist from releasing it in December 2025.
Per the lawsuit, a representative for the companies responded “after the film was released” and alleged that the concerns were “unfounded because the film did not expressly name Sergeant Smith and there was no implication that the Plaintiffs engaged in any misconduct in the film.”
