Does "reversing" characters provide enough of a "disconnect "to defend against a libel suit?

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson were fictional, of course, but Lauren Ipsum has convinced me that if they were real people, a story about a "drug-using detective and his MD sidekick" might expose a writer to a charge of libel. (A story about a detective and sidekick would not be a problem.) Suppose I reversed the order and made it a story about an medical doctor detective and ne'er do well crack-using sidekick. (This is the more expected sequence; Holmes and Dr. Watson are "unusual" to say the least.) Would that differentiate the characters sufficiently from the original?

Another theme I've toyed with is that of "Ivan and Donna," where Ivan is a mogul from East Europe and Donna is his ritzy American wife. Most people would recognize them as Donald and Ivana, of course, but since I've "mixed up" the two characters, would that make it impossible to tell where one character ends and the other begins?

Or could that even pass as "parody."

posted about 9 years ago

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Tom Au‭

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