A man who maintains an image taken of his unique, isolated Hollywood Hills home in 2022 for an ad promoting the Netflix series “Buying Beverly Hills” has brought unwelcome sightseers and real estate agents says in new court papers that the subscription video service is trying to “hide from accountability” with a dismissal motion based on free speech.
Aharon Dihno, 60, his twin 4-year-old sons and Dihno’s partner are the plaintiffs in the Los Angeles Superior Court suit, alleging intrusion upon seclusion, violation of the state’s false advertising and privacy laws and both intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress.
According to the suit, Netflix published an ad last September promoting “Buying Beverly Hills,” a reality television show depicting the daily operations of The Agency, a real estate firm that sells high-end property. The show focuses specifically on The Agency’s Beverly Hills office. The Agency is a co-defendant in the suit filed March 21.
Netflix lawyers maintain the claims against their client should be tossed both on their merits and as a violation of the company’s right to free speech based on the state’s anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) law, which is intended to prevent people from using courts, and potential threats of a lawsuit, to intimidate those who are exercising their First Amendment rights.
But in court papers filed Thursday with Judge Barbara M. Scheper, Dihno’s lawyers maintain Netflix is “wrongly trying to cloak itself in the anti-SLAPP statutes to hide from accountability” to the plaintiffs.
“What Netflix did to the Dihnos defies logic and decency,” the Dihno attorneys state in their court papers. “As a consequence, the Dihnos have been harassed, accosted, trespassed, and invaded by scores of people and agents trying to get a glimpse of the `celebrity’ home.”
In a sworn declaration filed in opposition to the anti-SLAPP motion, Dihno says that a woman repeatedly rang the doorbell at his home last October, saying she believed the house was for sale based on the Netflix ad.
“At the time, my partner and my and two young children were in the house and feared for their safety,” Dihno says. “I was forced to call the police. The police eventually arrived and removed the woman from the property.”
Dihno says he and his family were traumatized by the woman’s visit and that others have also come to the home and rang the doorbell, including two visitors who tried to climb a fence to see the residence’s interior.
“My family and I began to feel unsafe in our home,” Dihno says. “My family and I now live in constant fear that strangers will demand entry, or even force entry, into the home.”
Also last fall, Dihno’s neighbors reacted as celebrity bus tours brought people to see Dihno’s home and drivers told passengers it was the one depicted on “Buying Beverly Hills,” Dihno says.
“Our neighbors became so angry at me and complained so frequently that I eventually had to drive my car into the middle of the street to block the buses from traveling down my street,” Dihno says.
Real estate agents continually call saying they are interested in representing Dihno and his family if they want to sell their home, even though the plaintiffs have no plans to put it on the market, Dihno says.