Comedian John Oliver has been sued by a health insurance executive that he excoriated in an on-air rant.
“F--- that doctor with a rusty canoe. I hope he gets tetanus of the balls,” Oliver said in an episode of Last Week Tonight that aired in April 2024.
The expletives came moments after Oliver said that Dr. Brian Morley “thinks it’s okay if people have s--- on them for days” in reference to testimony from a 2017 Medicaid hearing about home nursing visits.
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The filing claims that Morley, a former medical director at AmeriHealth Caritas, actually “testified to the opposite” and never said it was “medically appropriate for individuals wearing diapers or who are otherwise immobile ‘to have s--- on them for days.‘”
Morley’s testimony came from a hearing about AmeriHealth Caritas’ decision to reduce home nursing visits for Nathan MacDonald to five times a week from twice daily, Des Moines Register reported.
In the hearing, Morley said that “people have bowel movements every day where they don’t completely clean themselves, and we don’t fuss over [them] too much... You know, I would allow him to be a little dirty for a couple of days.”
Last Week Tonight linked Dr. Morley’s quotes with a “similar” case of Iowa native Louis Facenda Jr., a 25-year-old wheelchair user with cerebral palsy who had daily home nursing visits cancelled and lost access to medication over a six week period after AmeriHealth Caritas stopped paying for the service.
The lawsuit hits back at this link between MacDonald and Facenda, asserting that Dr. Morley believed Facenda needed multiple daily visits but that MacDonald did not.
It says MacDonald “was not confined to a wheelchair, was not incontinent, did not wear diapers, independently toilet transferred, was independently mobile, could change his or her own clothes, bathed him or herself, and did not require in-home diaper changing or assistance to bathe generally.”
Instead, the filing claims that Morley’s original comments referred to “the average individual who is independently mobile but not wipe perfectly—not someone who is wearing diapers or otherwise laying in their own bowel movements.”
Oliver’s “feigned outrage” at the “out of context” quotes, the suit says, was “fabricated for ratings and profits at the expense of Dr. Morley’s reputation and personal well-being.
Morley is demanding a retraction and for the episode to be removed from all platforms.
The suit also demands $75,000 in compensatory damages, additional special and punitive damages to be determined and for Morley’s legal costs to be covered.
Representatives for John Oliver and his production company did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
