A California appeals court has ruled that Michael Crichton's estate can continue its lawsuit accusing Warner Bros. Television of secretly reworking a failed ‘ER' reboot into the hit medical drama ‘The Pitt.' A unanimous three-judge panel upheld a lower court's decision allowing the case to move forward, finding enough overlap between the two shows to let the dispute reach a jury.
The panel wrote that there are “clear and numerous similarities” between ‘The Pitt' and ‘ER,' though it noted that where exactly those similarities cross a legal line, on what it called a “ladder of abstraction protecting only the more specific expressions,” remains “a matter of ‘degree.'” As Rolling Stone reports, a three-judge panel unanimously upheld a lower court's ruling, finding sufficient similarities in terms of plot, themes, dialogue, mood, settings, pacing, characters and sequence of events to let the estate's claim proceed.
The ruling affirmed the denial of Warner Bros. Television's anti-SLAPP motion, which the studio had filed in August 2025 in an attempt to get the case tossed. Per Deadline, the order of the trial court denying the anti-SLAPP motion as to Warner Bros. Television is affirmed, meaning the studio itself remains on the hook even as three individual defendants are cleared. Noah Wyle, John Wells and R. Scott Gemmill, who are credited as working on both ‘ER' and ‘The Pitt,' were dismissed from the litigation after the panel found insufficient evidence that the producers were aware they could be violating Crichton's contractual rights.
How the Dispute Began
Sherri Crichton, who controls the estate of her late husband, filed suit against Warner Bros. Television and ‘The Pitt's creators in August 2024, as first reported in these proceedings. Michael Crichton, a creator of ‘ER' who died in 2008, had reportedly agreed with Warner Bros. in 1994 that the studio would not make new material derived from ‘ER' without his or his estate's permission, according to the filing. The estate alleges that Warner Bros. began developing an ‘ER' reboot in 2020 without informing Sherri Crichton, a claim detailed by the Los Angeles Times, which reported that the 1994 agreement prohibited the studio from making any sequels, remakes, spinoffs or other productions derived from ‘ER' without his express consent.
Sherri Crichton learned of the reboot plans in 2022 and began negotiating with Warner Bros. over the project, according to the lawsuit. She has alleged that Warner Bros. later revoked the terms of those negotiations, and that production on ‘The Pitt' should have halted once talks broke down. The estate claims ‘The Pitt' amounted to an unauthorized reboot of ‘ER' dressed up as something new.
Warner Bros. has pushed back firmly on that characterization. The studio told the Los Angeles Times that ‘The Pitt' is a new and original show, rejecting the estate's claim that it grew out of an abandoned ‘ER' revival.
Two Shows, One Emergency Room
The similarities cited by the appeals court go beyond a shared genre. Both shows are set in an emergency room, a comparison laid out by The Guardian, which noted the court's attention to the shows' emergency-room settings, medical jargon, graphic injuries and overlapping crises. Both series follow the personal and professional lives of a close-knit group of fictional doctors, with ‘ER' set in Chicago and ‘The Pitt' set in Pittsburgh.
The estate has also pointed to structural borrowing, alleging that ‘The Pitt's' format, with each episode spanning a 12-hour shift and unfolding almost in real time, was borrowed from the pilot episode of ‘ER,' according to Yahoo News. The dispute had swirled around ‘The Pitt' even before it aired, with the show rumored to be a remake of ‘ER' before its creators said the new hospital drama would take its own path.
What Comes Next
With the anti-SLAPP challenge resolved, the case will now proceed to discovery and a jury trial, per Yahoo News's report on the ruling. The Guardian adds that the suit will go to a jury trial in Los Angeles in 2027 unless the parties reach a settlement first. The appeals panel found that the estate's allegations suffice for a prima facie case, though the ruling does not amount to a final determination that ‘The Pitt' actually infringed on Crichton's rights.
‘ER' aired on NBC for 15 seasons between 1994 and 2009 and earned nearly two dozen Emmy Awards during its run, cementing its status as one of television's most decorated medical dramas. ‘The Pitt,' which premiered in January 2025, has already collected 11 Emmy Awards across its first two seasons, with Noah Wyle winning two best actor Emmys for his role, according to the original report from NBC 7 San Diego. Wyle, who starred in both shows, discussed the project's development with Amy Poehler on the Oct. 27 episode of her podcast Good Hang, saying the team had planned an ‘ER' reboot that did not happen and that disconnecting the project from ‘ER' ultimately freed the storytelling. Sherri Crichton did not immediately answer a request for comment, and representatives for Warner Bros., Wyle, Wells and Gemmill did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the ruling.
