Judge advances 'Love Is Blind' cast members' $1.4 million Netflix settlement

LOS ANGELES (CN) — A Superior Court judge on Monday gave preliminary approval to a settlement between Netflix and former cast members of the hit reality show “Love Is Blind” who filed a class action for a panoply of labor code violations, including unpaid wages.

Netflix will pay $1.4 million, to be divided up between some 144 people who appeared on the show.

Superior Court Judge Lawrence Riff previously expressed a degree of skepticism about some of the settlement’s terms, writing in a September brief that the extra $10,000 for class representative Jeremy Hartwell seemed “excessive,” as did the 35% of the settlement going toward attorneys’ fees.

The plaintiffs’ attorneys explained that the slightly higher than average fees was due to the amount of time put into the case, the risk involved and other cases they had to turn down.

On Monday, Riff indicated that he may trim the attorneys’ fees back before he grants final approval to the settlement in February.

“I’ll just say, I’ll be looking closely at final approval and may be trimming that back to the customary 33%, but I’ll keep an open mind,” the judge said.

Each season of “Love Is Blind” follows 30 men and women who meet and communicate with each other in special-built pods that allows them to hear but not see each other. After one proposes to another, the two are finally allowed to lay eyes on one another. Should their relationship clear that perilous hurdle, the show follows them to Mexico for a vacation and a meeting of each other’s parents and, eventually, a wedding.

Hartwell, 37, appeared on the second season of the show in 2022. Though he did not find a soul mate, he did find a reason to sue Netflix and the show’s production company.

They created, Hartwell said in his complaint, “unsafe and inhumane working conditions for the cast” by maintaining “excessive control over virtually every aspect of the lives of their shows’ cast” and “exerting complete domination over their time, schedule, and their ability to eat, drink, and sleep, and communicate with the outside world.”

Hartwell said cast members were constantly plied with free alcohol and denied food, all in the name of “entertainment value.”

“The combination of sleep deprivation, isolation, lack of food, and an excess of alcohol … contributed to inhumane working conditions and altered mental state for the cast,” Hartwell wrote.

“Love Is Blind,” which is among Netlifx’s most popular shows, is frequently the subject of controversy. The show has been sued numerous times by former cast members.

In 2023 a woman named Tran Dang, who was edited out of the show, sued another former contestant for sexual assault and named the production company as a codefendant. “Producers made attempts to mask plaintiff’s sexual assault by characterizing it as a lack of attraction on part of the plaintiff,” she wrote in her complaint. “When plaintiff insisted an assault took place, defendants Delirium TV and Kinetic Content questioned whether the problem was really one of communication and swept aside her concerns.”

Another woman, Renee Poche, sued Netflix and the show’s producers, saying they set her up with a homeless drug addict and put her in danger. An LA Superior Court Judge ruled that her case should go to arbitration, while a judge in Texas ruled that Dang’s case could remain active in civil court.

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