A Spanish drug smuggler has sued Netflix and forced the streamer to remove a sex scene from a hit series.
Laureano Oubiña attempted to sue Netflix last year for 1.5 million euros ($1.6 million), saying that the unflattering depiction of him in the series “Cocaine Coast” (“Fariña”) caused him “moral damage,” The Times of London reported.
Netflix has now been ordered to pay the 78-year-old Oubiña 15,000 euros (roughly $16,200) for violating his privacy, while the company was also forced to cut an “explicit sex” scene that appeared at the start of the first episode of the show.
The court ruled that the scene was unnecessary and purely designed to “hook the viewer into the plot,” per The Times of London.
Jorge Paladino, Oubiña’s lawyer, said in 2023 that Oubiña’s life had “worsened considerably” since the series came out due to his portrayal “as a person capable of taking the life of another” and as being “violent, sexist, a cocaine trafficker, impotent, vicious, unfaithful, a bad father, a bad husband, a brute, foolish, vengeful, an abuser of women, ignorant and a mafioso,” per the report.
Oubiña had also taken offense to a scene that showed him as unable to have sex with his wife during a conjugal prison visit.
The court rejected the other complaints, however.
The ruling can be appealed against, the report said.
Representatives for Netflix did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
“Cocaine Coast” tells the story of a young fisherman turned cocaine smuggler in 1980s Galicia, a region in northwest Spain.
The show is not currently available to watch in the US.
Oubiña’s is just one of a number of lawsuits Netflix has been hit with over the dramatization of real-life events.
Last month, Fiona Harvey, who claims that the character of Martha in the viral show “Baby Reindeer” was based on her, filed a lawsuit against Netflix, seeking more than $170 million in damages.
She claims the streamer did a poor job of disguising her identity and that the show has ruined her reputation.
A Netflix spokesperson told BI that the streamer intends “to defend this matter vigorously and to stand by Richard Gadd’s right to tell his story.”
The estate of the Colombian drug queen Griselda Blanco also filed a lawsuit earlier this year against Netflix over the show “Griselda,” in an attempt to halt the show’s release.
It claimed that the streamer had used the family’s images and likenesses without proper authorization.
The suit was settled in February.
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