In 2019, Taylor Hazlewood posted an image of himself holding a good friend’s hatchet on Instagram as a tribute to his favourite childhood e-book, “Hatchet,” a young-adult wilderness survival novel by Gary Paulsen.
Now, that picture has surfaced in a starkly completely different style.
Mr. Hazlewood is suing Netflix for utilizing his picture in “The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker,” a true-crime documentary a few hitchhiker turned convicted assassin. Mr. Hazlewood, a 27-year-old respiratory therapist from Kentucky, has by no means been related to a homicide, not to mention convicted of 1, based on the lawsuit filed in District Courtroom in Dallas final week.
He’s looking for $1 million in damages for defamation and the misappropriation of his likeness.
Reached by telephone on Tuesday, Mr. Hazlewood referred requests for remark to his lawyer, Angela Buchanan. In a press release, Ms. Buchanan stated “there ought to have been no confusion” if Netflix had completed “its homework.”
“Due to the dearth of due diligence,” she stated, “Mr. Hazlewood has a relentless worry relating to the impression the movie could have on his private relationships, his employment and his popularity on the whole.”
It was unclear why Mr. Hazlewood, who lives in Kentucky, had filed a lawsuit in Texas towards Netflix, which is predicated in California. Netflix declined to remark.
The Netflix documentary, which premiered in January, traces the story of Caleb Lawrence McGillvary. In February 2013, Mr. McGillvary was hitchhiking in Fresno, Calif., when a person who had picked him up struck a utility employee along with his automotive. The motive force then attacked a bystander who was attempting to intervene. That’s when Mr. McGillvary took a hatchet from his bag and repeatedly hit the driving force with it.
An interview with a local television station briefly turned Mr. McGillvary, who recognized himself solely as Kai, into an web and late evening discuss present hero: “Kai the Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker.”
Three months later, Mr. McGillvary was arrested and charged with murdering a person within the man’s house close to Elizabeth, N.J. Mr. McGillvary, who testified that he acted in self-defense after an tried sexual assault, was convicted in 2019 and sentenced to 57 years in jail.
The Netflix documentary reveals side-by-side photographs of Mr. Hazlewood and Mr. McGillvary, with a voice over that claims “stone-cold killer” and the textual content of a tweet that claims, “You may by no means belief anybody.”
In keeping with the lawsuit, Mr. Hazlewood first obtained phrase about using the picture within the movie from a good friend who texted him a couple of days after it premiered. After which one other good friend texted. Then one other.
“Have you ever seen this? They put your image up with a assassin lol” one good friend wrote. “I’m shocked they didn’t ask for a launch. Prayers that your employer is okay with it.”
One good friend wrote that she was watching “this homicide documentary they usually begin flashing a bunch of peoples photos and I stated that’s Hazlewood.”
“Did they steal your picture?” she wrote. “How did you get on there?”
One other good friend’s mom stated she requested if Mr. Hazlewood and Mr. McGillvary had been related.
The lawsuit accuses Netflix of inflicting Mr. Hazlewood “reputational hurt, stress, nervousness, and anguish,” and placing him in “fixed worry of dropping future employment or relationships due to individuals believing he’s harmful or untrustworthy.”
The usage of Mr. Hazlewood’s picture is the most recent instance of a true-crime present reducing corners, stated Bobbi Miller, who hosts a popular culture podcast referred to as “The Afternoon Particular.”
“It is a track and dance we’ve heard earlier than,” she stated. “There have been so many cases the place I feel for the fun of being first and the fun of getting probably the most partaking story you find yourself not doing the journalistic due diligence of fact-checking and triangulation.”
Nathaniel Brennan, an adjunct professor of cinema research at New York College, who teaches a category on true crime, stated he was stunned that “Netflix would blunder like that” given “how a lot cash they’ve invested” in true-crime sequence. However the fee of manufacturing could have diluted the ultimate product, he stated.
“I don’t know if Netflix would think about themselves journalists,” he stated. “I don’t know in the event that they maintain themselves to a unique normal.”
