Months before the critically acclaimed, Emmy and Golden Globe-winning show The Pitt, starring Noah Wyle, debuted on TV in January 2025, the showrunners faced a plagiarism lawsuit from a former collaborator.
Sherri Crichton, the widow of ER creator Michael Crichton and the current owner of his estate, claimed in August 2024 that the show was originally supposed to be a reboot of the NBC medical drama and copied several elements from its predecessor.
Warner Bros. fought back, arguing the two are different shows, but a California appeals court dismissed that argument on Wednesday, November 4, allowing Sherri to move forward with the lawsuit.
Many netizens found the Crichton estate’s argument futile, pointing out that any procedural series would have similar elements and that this does not, by default, point to IP infringement.
“Aren’t those the elements of like…every single medical show ever?” one user argued.
The ER creator’s widow sued The Pitt for alleged breach of a 33-year-old contract
Airing from 1994 to 2009, ER by Jurassic Park writer Michael Crichton became the second-longest-running medical drama in American TV history after Grey’s Anatomy.
ER featured Noah Wyle as Dr. John Carter, a clumsy medical student who became an attentive physician. R. Scott Gemmill and John Wells, the two creators of The Pitt, served as executive producers.
In August 2024, Sherri Crichton filed the lawsuit, claiming that Gemmill, Wells, and Wyle had initially wanted to reboot ER and only changed course after failing to secure her permission.
According to court documents, Michael Crichton entered into an agreement with Warner Bros. in 1994 about not making works “derivative” of ER without his (or his estate’s) permission. By making The Pitt, the defendants had breached that contract, the suit claimed.
Warner Bros. filed a motion to throw out the suit under California’s anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) statute, meant to uphold freedom of expression, arguing that “The Pitt does not use a single protected element from ER” and the two shows share only “generic similarities” common to “any dramatic story involving emergency room doctors.”
Judge Wendy Chang denied the motion last year, finding that Sherri had offered enough evidence. Now, a three-judge panel at the appeals court ruled that “there are clear and numerous similarities” between the two shows for her to pursue the lawsuit.
Next, a jury will decide whether The Pitt is a “derivative” work of ER and therefore is a breach of contract, unless the parties settle before then.
However, the court dismissed one claim against The Pitt creators after finding no evidence they knew they could be violating the 1994 Crichton-Warner Bros. agreement.
Netizens debated the credibility of Sherri Crichton’s lawsuit
The judges said on Wednesday that they compared the pilot scripts and found that “both shows take place, with little exception, in the emergency room, as opposed to other medical shows which track patients as they move out of the emergency room, or indeed never enter it.”
“Both shows feature a series of patients: they are presented in overlapping sequences, with medical personnel interrupting their work with one to attend to another, layering on crisis after crisis.”
Their ruling also pointed to “fast-paced dialogue,” “graphic depictions of injuries,” and the portrayal of “a young doctor, fresh from medical school and incompetent” as similarities between the two shows.
Netizens mocked the ruling online, arguing that any medical drama would, by default, include those elements.
“Apples and oranges. ER is similar to The Pitt the same way that Halloween Cake Wars is similar to The Great British Baking Show, what with their ovens, spatulas, flour, new and experienced bakers, cameras, walls, oxygen…. Right?” one user joked.
Another said, “Did they sue Grey’s Anatomy, Chicago Med, The Resident, New Amsterdam, The Good Doctor, and Code Black too?”
“Other than being about an emergency room in America with Noah Wyle, I see no specific similarities,” a third wrote. A fourth commented, “Is that not the stock standard of all medical shows?”
A fifth user argued, “It’s not the similarities alone that lend this lawsuit credibility. It’s the fact that The Pitt emerged after negotiations for an ER revival fell apart… That context raises legit questions, but citing common medical drama staples and genre tropes doesn’t really strengthen the case very much.”
Noah Wyle was “profoundly sad and disappointed” over the lawsuit
The Pitt indeed started as a potential revival of ER, centering around Wyle’s character, Dr. John Carter, 15 years after the show’s finale, the actor told Variety Australia in April 2025.
“That would’ve been a unique show, to be able to see Noah at 23 and then flash-forward to when he’s 52 or 53 and see that dichotomy,” said showrunner Gemmill. “Whether it would have worked or not, I don’t know. But it would have been a fun experiment.”
When asked about the lawsuit, Wyle told the outlet that the only thing he could “legally speak to” was that it made him feel “profoundly sad and disappointed.”
“This taints the legacy, and it shouldn’t have,” he said. “At one point, this could have been a partnership. And when it wasn’t a partnership, it didn’t need to turn acrimonious.”
“But on the 30th anniversary of ER, I’ve never felt less celebratory of that achievement than I do this year,” added the recently declared People Magazine‘s Sexiest Man Alive 2026.
“We pivoted as far in the opposite direction as we could in order to tell the story we wanted to tell—and not for litigious reasons, but because we didn’t want to retread our own creative work,” Wyle explained their strategy after Warner Bros. could not come to terms with the Crichton estate.
“We really wanted to find something new for ourselves. And in some ways, that’s what was so disheartening about the whole thing. We really felt like we’d done it.”
The Pitt’s second season aired in January 2026, and it has since been renewed for a third season.
“None of them would have a career without it,” one user argued
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