Pioneering Female Chess Champ Sues Netflix over "Queen's Gambit" Slight!!!

Oops, I mixed up the WWCCs. It was Gaprindashvili, not Chiburdanidze! Gaprindashvili being 20 years older, it is even more plausible that there was no anticipation of this 80 year old, long-retired East European kicking up a fuss.

It didn't occur to you that in a FICTIONAL movie things are said that may not be true???

As you get older you will find that often times the movies are not real. They are make believe. 

Forgive me if I find it hard to believe that you think LESS of Nona now than before the movie. 

I sincerely hope you don't represent Netflix in court. pffff

Yes, that's surely the weakest part of Gaprindashvili's case.  But relatively small damages isn't *no* damages.  As a practical matter, I very much doubt Netflix will want to gamble on a jury keeping the number minimal.  Juries are unpredictable, and Netflix isn't going to want to risk having the jury hand her a big judgement if things go badly at trial. Suppose her lawyers turn up unfortuante evidence about exaclty how the decision was made, for instance.  Maybe someone testifies that someone else involved in script had known her and made disparaging comments about her.  (At least one person involved did know her and also has a history of making disparaging comments about women chess players.)  Just how certain is Netflix that it was an innocent error?  If the executives making the decision about the lawsuit weren't there in the room when the script was hammered out, then they probably can't be. I'm not saying that happened, but these are the things the lawyers and Netflix suits are going to have to consider.  And it's not just the possibility of some huge revelation -- even something more mundane, like having a key witness come off looking like a jerk, can influence a jury.

Rather than risk the ire of a jury, I'd think it's very likely they'll reach a settlement.  Probably it won't be an enormous sum for the reasons you give.  But it'll be more than nothing. 

I won't feel bad.  Netflix can afford it.

Trust me, they are doing just fine on their own. They have said they will defend this vigorously, which I expect they will. It would set a bad precedent to allow this sort of nonsense. 

I know anyone can sue anyone for anything, but that doesn't mean we should be encouraging it. 

For versions of "doing fine" that include having a judge reject pretty much all the arguments you made in your brief...

Thats how the legal system works. By doing fine I mean ensuring that Nona doesn't get a dime. The entertainment industry cannot have people like that going around suing anyone for anything. Creative license is pretty broad. In this case, since there is no harm, certainly no "defamation" there isn't much Netflix has to worry about. 

Her case isn't impossible to bring. It's just impossible to prove. 

I'm beginning to think you are delusional.

You realize I acknowledged that, right?  One of us is trying to distinguish between, on the one hand, all the ordinary modes of historical fiction and, on the other hand, telling flat lies about living people.  And one of us is claiming that there's no moral or legal difference between those two things.  I'll leave it to other readers to decide which is the more mature position.

"Forgive me if I find it hard to believe that you think LESS of Nona now than before the movie."

If she hadn't filed the lawsuit, then I would probably still be under the misapprehension that she never faced men and therefore didn't play any of the top Soviet players.  So, leaving aside the fact that the lawsuit has corrected this misinformation in my mind, then, yeah, I'm sorry to say that I thought less of her after hearing the line than before.  Which isn't an accident -- that's what the line is supposed to make you do.  I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.

One of the problems is that in order to think less of her (defamation) one would have to know who she is. There is no reason to even think that name (in the movie) is even a real person. If someone knows who she is, they probably follow chess history. That is going to be a very, very small portion of the general population. Likely far less than 1% of the population. 

So, to think less of her we would have to know who she is in the first place. And to know who she is in the first place, it would be very unlikely to think less of her because of the movie. By far, the average viewer isn't even going to think that name is a real name, and even if they knew it was a real name, who is going to care if she did (or did not) face men in any fictional tournament (or real life womens championship)? It's a tough sell for sure. 

What's the standard going to be? Is a reasonable person (the viewer obviously) going to think LESS of Nona because of the context of the narration in a ficitonal movie? Try to find a reasonable person (not a chess fan) that even remembers the line in the movie, much less if the person was real or not. 

That's a lot of fancy tap dancing that amounts to, "It's okay to lie about someone in public."

It's not. 

Funnily enough, the courts seem not to think so either.

It's not lying. 

Of COURSE she can sue. Anyone can sue anyone for anything. I'm still very disturbed a fly landed on my sandwich. The amount of pain and suffering I'm going though is incalculable. 

Maybe it's ok to lie about someone in public, maybe it's not. But it DOES happen all the time. In this case though if there is disagreement over a line in a fictional movie, it doesn't rise to the level of harm. There is no intent to harm, there is no "defamation" because certainly nobody thinks less of her because of the movie. 

Again we have to look at the context of the fictional account. This is not a documentary. It's a fictional account, of a fictional character, at a fictional tournament. The mention of a real life person (who happened to NOT play men in this fictional tournament) doesn't defame Nona in any way. 

Her loss of credibility or reputation isn't from her chess career, it isn't from a line in a movie, it's from her bringing a suit thats seen as a feeble attempt at scrounging for a few dollars. 

A fly in one's soup? She's defending her honor. 

Uh huh.

Sounds like you've got yourself some alternative facts.

What honor? What honor is there in trying to sue Netflix for a couple bucks? That takes away from her accomplishments, not add to them. 

The line in the movie even said she was world champion, which she was. Did she face men to get that title? I doubt it. Did she face men in this fictional tournament? Obviously not. There is no dishonor in those facts. 

     The controversial line is "There's Nona Gaprindashvili, but she's the female world champion and has never played men", so she was acknowledged to be a world champion.

     I've looked around, and the earliest competition I can find in which she played men (big-time tournaments, not local chess club and team matches a a girl) is the Hastings Chess Congress Challengers section in 1963-64, which she won, earning an invitation to the next year's top section where she lost to GMs Gheorghiu and Gligoric and drew winner Keres. Does anyone know of any other top-level mixed gender tournaments she participated in during the 1960s?

     Just a thought: Big international Fortune 500 corporations such as Netflix have a large cadre of lawyers on the payroll and can bury this lawsuit for years in endless delaying motions, and repeatedly appeal on various perhaps trivial grounds, dragging out a final decision for as much as 20 years. This would mean that Nona, 80+ years old now, will never see a dime and any defamation award will become moot, leaving only the probably non-existent monetary damages.

Yes. And no doubt her attorney knows this. Netflix can bury this lawsuit, and if so inclined, bury Nonas financial situation if she keeps this up. Knowing that she can't win, my guess is her attorney required some up front fee. I don't think contingency will matter, since the attorney will get most of it. It all comes down to if Netflix wants to make a point. 

It was not a smart move on her part, but, there is the chance she will gain some notoriety from the lawsuit. I think Barney said it best, in the title of this topic, it was a "slight". Nowhere near the level of defamation, and because she likely makes more money now on residual income than before, arguing for any monetary damages is pointless. 

     More likely the lawyer got Nona to sign on to this lawsuit by working pro-bono and just want's the publicity he will get. If it becomes an expensive drawn-out process I imagine it will eventually fade away.

Good Morning.  That is quite a coincidence, I just recently thought  that using the word "slight" was inaccurate, that it was too mild a term.  But the item was hot, and I had to beat the hacks at the "official" news section of the site to press, before they could steal my story.    So, typing furiously, that's how it came out.  I don't know how it made it past my editing team, and I actually recently had thought of changing it, but then decided to let it stand as is, seeing as how this title is now a part of the historical record of the way this story is being covered ... for future generations to ponder on, and, if the current situation is any indication, pontificate about!!!

Now back to my coffee.

Carry on, Dear Readers!