In the 2024 Netflix miniseries “The Program: Cons, Cults and Kidnapping,” filmmaker Katherine Kubler sits in a Utah bar watching Narvin Lichfield — who operated two teen treatment programs — croon a karaoke-version of a Frank Sinatra song.

As Lichfield sings “Witchcraft,” Kubler narrates:

“It was surreal to see Narvin in person, knowing everything I know about this guy: the children he abused, the parents he conned, all the crimes he’s gotten away with.”

Kubler’s miniseries focused on alleged abuses in a network of so-called “troubled teen” programs. A few months after it was released, Lichfield sued her and Netflix — arguing that specific scene, and others, crossed the line into defamation.

But the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed. In a July 27 decision, the judges upheld a lower court’s decision to toss out Lichfield’s lawsuit and affirmed that Kubler and Netflix were exercising their protected free speech rights. Kubler and Netflix’s lawyers did not respond to a request for comment.

Lichfield’s attorney, Michael Hepworth, plans to petition for a rehearing or other remedy, and said it was unfair that the case was dismissed before any evidence was considered.

“Accusations of the most serious kind have been broadcast to a worldwide audience,” Hepworth said, “while the forum built to test whether such accusations are true, a courtroom with discovery, evidence, and a jury, closed before it ever opened.”

In the series, Kubler details her own traumatic experiences at the Academy at Ivy Ridge, a program in New York that was part of the Worldwide Association of Programs and Schools (WWASP). Lichfield’s brother, Robert Lichfield, started the first WWASP program in Utah in the 1980s. The network grew globally until it dissolved in 2010, plagued by allegations of severe abuse and torture.

Lichfield had no meaningful connection to Ivy Ridge, but he was the focus of one episode as Kubler looked at WWASP as a whole.

“I have never abused a student, and I never directed anyone else to do so,” Lichfield said through his attorney. “No court and no law enforcement agency has ever made a finding of abuse against me. All I have ever asked for is my day in court to answer these accusations.”

Here are the key moments that Lichfield considers defamation — and what the appeals court found.

That karaoke scene

Kubler’s karaoke voiceover amounted to defamation, Lichfield argued, when she says: “knowing the children he abused, the parents he conned, all the crimes he’s gotten away with.”

The appeals court, though, ruled that wasn’t a defamatory statement, noting words like “abuse” and “conned” have several meanings and don’t accuse Lichfield of anything specific.

Kubler’s series also focused on her personal experiences and opinions, the court noted. She never presented herself as an unbiased journalist, instead acknowledging she was in part motivated by “revenge.”

The court considered this the “closest call” of the three issues Lichfield raised, Hepworth noted.

“Where a question is that close, we believe the better course is to allow a factual record to be developed rather than to resolve it against the plaintiff at the earliest possible stage,” he said. “We are also troubled by a rule under which an accuser’s openly acknowledged bias may strengthen, rather than weaken, the protection afforded her accusations.”

Getting ‘away with murder’

In another scene, a photo of Lichfield is pinned to a bulletin board next to a Salt Lake Tribune newspaper clipping about a child dying in a wilderness program.

This placement, Lichfield argued, falsely implied he was responsible for the child’s death.

In the same scene, Kubler narrates her opinion that “people at the top” seem to “get away with murder.”

The appeals court said the lower court was right when it determined the phrase “get away with murder” is a “common idiom” and was not defamatory.

The judges also found the juxtaposition of Lichfield’s photo with the Tribune headline did not convey a conclusive link between the two.

An arrest, but no conviction

Lichfield was tied to two WWASP programs: Carolina Springs Academy, in South Carolina, and the Academy at Dundee Ranch, in Costa Rica.

In 2003, he was arrested in Costa Rica, accused of depriving children at Dundee Ranch of their civil liberties; he was later found innocent of abuse charges. (The Tico Times, a Costa Rican news outlet, reported a three-judge panel found Dundee Ranch residents were abused, but ruled evidence and testimony did not show Lichfield ordered it.)

In his lawsuit, Lichfield alleged the documentary defamed him by including a headline about the arrest without the context that he was exonerated.

Filmmakers are free to use their editorial discretion, the appeals court noted, and including accurate information about an arrest without the context that he was exonerated is not considered defamation, they found.

An A.I. warning that ‘should go without saying’

The appeals court also noted in its opinion that Lichfield’s attorneys twice cited legal decisions that don’t exist — a likely sign they used generative artificial intelligence in their written arguments.

“It should go without saying,” the decision reads, “that a bare-minimum reasonable inquiry will ensure legal authorities cited in papers submitted to the court actually exist, and the quotations or propositions attributed to them also exist.”

The court recently fined another attorney $1,000 for using A.I., which hallucinated non-existent legal authority. In Lichfield’s case, however, the judges found the “errors are not as egregious” and did not merit sanctions.

Yet, they warned attorneys should make sure their briefs are supported by actual cases.