The son of disgraced attorney Alex Murdaugh is suing Netflix and Warner Bros., along with a large newspaper chain, claiming he has been wrongly implicated in a 2015 killing.
The lawsuit from Buster Murdaugh filed Friday is the latest episode in the sprawling saga of a South Carolina legal dynasty’s fall from grace. Alex Murdaugh is set to spend the rest of his life in prison for killing his wife, Maggie, and youngest son, Paul. Three generations served as elected prosecutors in South Carolina’s Lowcountry; the jurisdiction was called “Murdaugh Country.”
Now, its sole surviving heir, who has not been charged in the crime, is fighting to clear his own name.
But defamation attorneys in South Carolina say it will be an uphill battle for Buster Murdaugh and his attorney Shaun Kent.
“Kent is liable to run into some stiff resistance,” Robert B. Ransom, of the Columbia, S.C., firm Leventis & Ransom, told The Washington Post.
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Kent’s staff said he was in trial Monday and did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday. None of those being sued immediately responded to The Post’s requests for comment Tuesday.
The lawsuit claims three documentaries wrongly link Buster to the death of Stephen Smith, a 19-year-old nursing student found dead along a desolate stretch of road in the Lowcountry.
The incident was reported as a hit-and-run at the time. But in March 2023, after the media spectacle surrounding the Alex Murdaugh murder trial, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division declared Smith’s death a homicide. Smith’s body was exhumed in April 2023. The national attention kicked up many rumors about the family, with Smith’s death being just one.
The trio of documentaries are “Murdaugh Murders: Deadly Dynasty,” which ran on Discovery Plus and Investigation Discovery; “Low Country: The Murdaugh Dynasty,” which streamed on HBO’s Max platform; and Netflix’s “Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal.”
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They all put forward the same idea: Buster Murdaugh was a member of a powerful family that didn’t take kindly to their son having a romantic relationship with another man, so they killed Smith. Some of the documentaries claim Buster killed Smith with a baseball bat, which Buster has denied.
The Netflix series shows a portrayal of a young man with red hair (Buster is a redhead) carrying a baseball bat, which the lawsuit claims was intended to depict Buster as the killer.
The Netflix series also features Michael DeWitt, editor of the Hampton County Guardian newspaper, speaking about the case. In the documentary, the lawsuit claims, he said: “We were hearing all of these rumors about a possible connection,” and “there is some truth to it.” (DeWitt’s newspaper is published by Gannett, the large media company that owns USA Today and hundreds of local news brands.)
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Upon hearing the outline of the lawsuit, Ransom said of the defendants: “My sense is that there’s just enough truth in all these media portrayals that they’ll be fine.”
South Carolina defamation attorneys agree the case will likely be won or lost on determining whether Buster was a “public figure.”
The usual definition is someone who has put themselves forward in society and thus opens themselves up to criticism. Buster sat down for the three-part Fox News series “The Fall of the House of Murdaugh” that aired after the trial but otherwise has rarely courted attention.
If he is found to be a public figure? “The burden he has to meet to prove defamation is exceedingly high,” Ransom said.
“That call could come before trial, but I would think that that’s not a call that would come early in the case,” Stephen F. DeAntonio of the Charleston-based DeAntonio Law Firm told The Post.
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DeAntonio said Buster has all the hallmarks of someone who was involuntarily forced into the public eye.
“There were so many events and issues and controversies that occurred while all of this was going on. You couldn’t keep up with it. He got drawn into it,” DeAntonio said.
He continued: “And it’s also sad. There was a tragic ending to this for a lot of people. That’s not lost on me, but if the plaintiff in this case is found to be a public figure or an involuntary public figure or a limited-purpose public figure for this case, it’s a game changer.”
Those being sued have 30 days to respond to the lawsuit.
