ER creator Michael Crichton‘s widow, Sherri Crichton, has taken HBO Max’s award-winning medical drama The Pitt to court.
A three-judge appeals panel unanimously denied Warner Bros. Television’s motion to dismiss Sherri’s lawsuit in November 2026, ruling that The Pitt and ER share enough similarities for the case to move forward. The decision keeps Warner Bros. Television on the hook while dismissing individual claims against creative team Noah Wyle, John Wells and R. Scott Gemmill.
ER aired on NBC from 1994 to 2009, set in a fictionalized version of Chicago’s Cook County Hospital, starring Wyle, George Clooney, Julianna Marguiles, Anthony Edwards, Eriq La Salle and Sherry Stringfield, with John Stamos, Mekhi Pfifer and Linda Cardellini joining in later seasons.
The Pitt, which premiered in 2025 and streams on HBO Max, is described by the network as “a realistic examination of the challenges facing healthcare workers in today’s America as seen through the lens of the frontline heroes working in a modern-day hospital in Pittsburgh.” Each season covers one hour of a single emergency room shift.
Scroll down for a complete breakdown of how the legal fight started and where it stands now:
Sherri Crichton Files Lawsuit Against ‘The Pitt’
Sherri filed her motion in August 2024 — one month after The Pitt began filming in July 2024 and before the series premiered on HBO Max. In the complaint, she alleged that creators Wells and Wyle initially pursued an ER reboot and, after failing to secure her approval, rebranded the project as The Pitt.
She described the show as an ER revival “just under a different name” and called the maneuver “a shameful betrayal of [Michael] Crichton and his legacy.”
At the heart of the case is a “frozen rights” provision in Michael’s contract with Warner Bros. Television, which barred the studio from producing ER spinoffs or reboots without his approval. (Michael died in 2008, leaving Sherri to attempt to enforce the provision on behalf of his estate.)
‘The Pitt’ Studio Fights Back
Warner Bros. Television first tried to toss Sherri’s lawsuit in November 2026, citing California’s anti-SLAPP statute that shields defendants from suits targeting protected speech. Judge Wendy Chang denied that motion, finding Sherri had presented enough evidence to proceed.
Warner Bros. Television then appealed — and lost again. The three-judge panel unanimously rejected the studio’s bid later that month.
“There are clear and numerous similarities between The Pitt and ER; where those similarities lie, on a ladder of abstraction protecting only the more specific expressions, is a matter of ‘degree,” the panel found, per NBC News. “Making favorable inferences in Roadrunner’s favor, as we must, we find the details here suffice for a prima facie case.”
The panel, however, did dismiss the claims against The Pitt creators individually, finding the trio were not aware they could be violating Michael’s contractual rights.
“I am deeply gratified by the Court of Appeal decision,” Sherri said in a statement to Deadline. “[I] look forward to discovery and to our case, which affects writers, creators and their families and estates, being presented to a jury.”
Noah Wyle Responds to ‘The Pitt’ Lawsuit Claims
Wyle — who starred as Dr. John Carter on ER for 11 seasons before signing on to lead The Pitt as Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch — has repeatedly insisted the two shows are fundamentally different projects.
Speaking to Variety in April 2025, Wyle said that once the team paused on developing an ER reboot, the creative group behind The Pitt “pivoted as far in the opposite direction as we could in order to tell the story we wanted to tell.”
“Not for litigious reasons, but because we didn’t want to retread our own creative work,” he stated.
The Emmy winner elaborated on the shift in a January 2025 TVLine interview, telling the outlet: “The more we went down that road, the more the point got obscured in the reunion aspect, the retread aspect and the reboot aspect. So I was not sorry when we were sort of forced to pivot and figure out how to tell the story in a new way.”
Wyle further noted that abandoning the ER framework actually freed up the writers. “In a lot of ways, [not reviving ER] unburdened us from narrative limitations that we would have had to adhere to, and pay homage to,” he said.
This story was compiled with the help of AI tools and edited by journalists.
