CBS Studios Has Moved to Strike a Former Matlock Writer's Discrimination Suit

CBS Studios has filed a motion in Los Angeles Superior Court to strike a lawsuit brought earlier this summer by John Lowe, a former writer on Matlock. The filing was made under California's anti-SLAPP statute and includes multiple declarations disputing his account.

Lowe's suit named CBS Studios, the showrunner Jennie Snyder Urman, and the executive producers Nicki Renna and Jeffrey Lieber. It alleged that racially stereotyped comments about his body and genitalia were directed at him and at other Black cast and crew members, and that this created a hostile work environment.

What the studio is arguing

The motion throws the studio's weight behind all three producers while contesting the substance of the claims.

"We take allegations of discrimination and harassment very seriously," a CBS Studios spokesperson said. The filing of the motion, they said, was a first step toward challenging what they called a baseless complaint, and following a thorough investigation the studio is confident Lowe's accusations are demonstrably inaccurate.

"False allegations are deeply damaging, both to those wrongly accused, and to anyone with a serious and legitimate claim of discrimination," the spokesperson added. "We stand firmly behind our producers and look forward to the truth coming to light."

That second sentence is the more carefully constructed one, and it is doing two things at once: defending the named producers, and positioning the studio as protective of genuine complaints rather than hostile to them.

False allegations are deeply damaging, both to those wrongly accused, and to anyone with a serious and legitimate claim

The central factual dispute

The core of Lowe's claim is that his termination was retaliatory. He says it came two weeks after he reported an incident in which Urman used a racial slur in place of the word Juneteenth.

Urman, Renna, Lieber and other witnesses dispute this in sworn declarations. Urman, the filing states, never used that word, and did not say it to Renna, to Lowe, or to anyone else.

There is no middle reading available here. Either the remark was made or it was not, and the two accounts cannot both be true.

The studio also corrects a detail of the timeline. Lowe worked on Matlock from October 2023 to July 2024, not into 2025 as his complaint stated.

Lowe's side has not responded in substance

Ron Zambrano, Lowe's attorney, said his team had not yet been served with the motion and so could not address its specifics.

He was confident about the outcome. "I am confident we will successfully oppose the motion," he said, "as the complaint was drafted with that possibility in mind."

That last clause is worth sitting with. It says the complaint was written in anticipation of exactly this filing, which is a claim about drafting strategy rather than about the facts, and it is the only substantive thing either side has said about the motion so far.

Why the anti-SLAPP route matters

The statute CBS has invoked exists to let defendants dispose quickly of lawsuits that target protected activity, and it changes the shape of the case considerably.

An anti-SLAPP motion does not wait for discovery. It requires the plaintiff to demonstrate, early and on the papers, a probability of prevailing on the merits. If the studio succeeds, the case ends before either side has taken depositions. If it fails, the litigation proceeds with the studio's own declarations already on the record and available to be tested.

That is the real consequence of this filing. It compresses a dispute that would normally take a year into an argument about whether Lowe can show enough, now, to be allowed to continue.

Nothing has been decided. What has happened is that CBS has chosen the fastest available route to an answer, and has put three producers' sworn accounts behind it.