For the owners of Oceana Grill, an appearance on Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares won’t stop rearing its head. Though it has been over seven years since the French Quarter restaurant was featured on the reality TV show about restaurants in desperate need of an overhaul, clips from the show continue to circulate on social media.
The Advocate reports that the restaurant’s ownership group is suing Ramsay and his production company over the continued use of clips from their 2011 episode. Cajun Conti filed suit against the Kitchen Nightmares team last Wednesday after a snippet of the episode was shared on their official Facebook page.
The clip in question showed Ramsay sniffing some shrimp that had turned and vomiting. The owners are claiming defamation for sharing the images of Oceana without noting that the episode was filmed in 2011.
“The problem we have is the fact that it’s so misleading,” Daniel Davillier, an attorney for Oceana Grill, told The Advocate. “People think it’s something current, when in fact it’s very old.”
The original Facebook post has been removed but another post showing many of the same scenes was shared on Thursday. Cajun Conti claims that these posts were in violation of an agreement they reached with Fox Broadcasting after the episode aired. They claim that the company agreed to pay them $10,000 per out-of-context use of the footage and provide a statement that would put the footage in context on each new use.
The lawsuit also claims that the reality TV show producers stretched the truth during the initial filming.
“During the episode’s filming, defendants went to great lengths to over-dramatize and even fabricate problems with the restaurant in order to increase ratings,” the new lawsuit claims. “The footage intentionally portrayed Oceana and its employees in a patently false and negative light, as it depicted the appealing restaurant as an unsuccessful, unsanitary and mismanaged restaurant.”
Read the original story over at The Advocate.