A federal judge has once again dismissed a lawsuit against Showtime that claimed George & Tammy — a TV series about country music legends George Jones and Tammy Wynette — unfairly turned her late husband into “the villain.”
The case, filed in 2024, alleged that the Showtime series conveyed a “negative and disparaging portrayal” of the late George Richey, a songwriter and producer to whom Wynette was married for decades after her split from Jones.
Though a judge initially dismissed the case last year, he gave Richey’s widow (Sheila Slaughter Richey) a chance to fix her claims and refile the case. But in a ruling Monday (March 30), that same judge dismissed the lawsuit for good.
“I dismissed Sheila’s claim once but gave her leave to amend,” Judge Stephanos Bibas wrote Monday. “This time, her claim fares no better, and I now dismiss it [permanently].”
Released in December 2022, George & Tammy was well-received by critics — particularly Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain’s respective portrayals of Jones and Wynette. Both were later nominated for Emmy Awards for their performances.
Sheila filed her case in January 2024, claiming the series had depicted Richey as a “devious husband” who engaged in physical abuse, facilitated Wynette’s drug addiction, and committed “financial and managerial manipulation” of the late country icon.
Accusations about a harmful depiction of a real-world person would typically be filed as a defamation lawsuit, but Sheila didn’t sue Showtime for defamation. And that’s likely because she couldn’t: Under U.S. law, defamation cases can only be filed by living people, not on behalf of the deceased.
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Instead, Sheila claimed the show indirectly violated a 2019 legal settlement in which Wynette’s daughter, Georgette Jones, promised not to make disparaging statements about Richey. Since George & Tammy was a licensed adaptation of Georgette’s 2011 memoir about her parents, the lawsuit alleged that Showtime had been unjustly enriched by Georgette’s decision to violate her agreement with Sheila.
But in both last year’s ruling and the new decision on Monday, Judge Bibas said Sheila had failed to meet the strict legal requirements to bring such a case.
“Sheila’s claim fails for the same basic reason: A plaintiff bringing an unjust-enrichment claim must have an interest in the benefit that was conferred,” the judge writes. “Yet Sheila has not shown an interest in anything that Showtime got from Georgette.”
The ruling echoes what the judge said the first time: That Sheila’s dispute was really with Georgette. In that earlier ruling, he also suggested she had instead sued the network because of the potential for a larger judgment.
“Sheila could have sued Georgette for breaking their agreement,” Bibas wrote at the time. “But George & Tammy had been a hit, and Showtime had presumably profited handsomely from Georgette’s breach. So instead of going after Georgette for whatever damages her breach caused, Sheila set out for bigger game.”
