Dr. Phil's Most High-Profile Legal Troubles (There Have Been Plenty)

Depending on how old you are, you might not know that "The Oprah Winfrey Show" was where Dr. Phil, whose full name is Phil McGraw, got his start. Before he had his own TV show and before Dr. Phil came out as a Donald Trump supporter, he was a psychologist guest on the show. He got that gig after he helped Oprah prep for a trial after she was sued by the cattle industry for talking about mad cow disease on her show. 

From there, he went on to get his own daytime talk show, and he became wildly popular. "Dr. Phil" ran for an impressive 21 seasons, starting in 2002 and ending in 2023. But even at the height of his fame, Dr. Phil's life had its share of tragedy and personal drama. And that includes facing some challenging legal issues that range from lawsuits over his actions related to a teenage girl while he was a TV talk show host to a complicated bankruptcy situation with a media company he formed.

There were times that Dr. Phil McGraw was thought to have taken things way too far on his show. "Dr. Phil" often featured troubled teens, and one such teen was 17-year-old Hannah Archuleta. In 2021, Archuleta, represented by renowned attorney Gloria Allred, sued Dr. Phil as well as CBS. The lawsuit involved her reported mistreatment at Turn-About Ranch in Utah where he had her parents send her after she was on his show in 2019. 

In the lawsuit, Archuleta alleged that a male staff member at the camp sexually assaulted her, and that she subsequently got in trouble for speaking out. Dr. Phil frequently referred the teens who appeared on his show to the facility. The lawsuit alleged that Archuleta's parents felt pressured to send her there, and Dr. Phil reportedly told Archuleta's father that she would be safe at Turn-About. Paris Hilton even spoke out about the case, as one of the tragic details about Hilton's life includes allegedly being abused at a similar facility.

The lawsuit ended up getting dismissed in 2022. It was determined that CBS and Dr. Phil were covered by California's Anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) law as it relates to free speech.

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).

In 2023, Dr. Phil McGraw announced plans to open his own media company called Merit Street Media, echoing what his mentor Oprah Winfrey did with the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). Dr. Phil created Merit Street Media when his company Peteski Productions partnered with Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), and it launched in April 2024. However, while OWN became extremely successful, Merit Street Media declared bankruptcy 15 months after its launch.

Merit Street Media also ended up suing TBN, and then TBN countersued. There's been a lot of back and forth as to who did what in regards to a show, employees, and payments and who was in the wrong. Parts of the case are still ongoing as of this writing. But the bankruptcy case didn't go the way that Dr. Phil apparently wanted it to. Instead of Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which allows a company to reorganize and try to keep going, a judge ruled that it needed to be Chapter 7 instead. In the case of Chapter 7 bankruptcies, a company has to liquidate its assets to pay its debts. Professional Bull Riders (PBR) is the largest creditor that Merit Street Media owed, with costs of $181 million.

A judge determined that it didn't seem as though there were going to be any attempts at reorganization within Merit Street Media or a focus on making sure to pay all of its debt. Instead, it appeared that Dr. Phil was going to be creating another new company called Envoy Media, and potentially not focusing on paying off debt owed to places like PBR. This assessment was based in part on claims that Dr. Phil said he was planning a "gangster move" with the bankruptcy and "getting rid of TBN," according to Variety.

The Merit Street Media case wasn't the first time that Dr. Phil McGraw had to deal with bankruptcy. Back in the early 1970s, long before Dr. Phil was a famous public figure, he lived in Topeka, Kansas, and at age 21, he was a co-owner of a private health club. However, the health club apparently didn't do so well, and it ended up going bankrupt. The business owed money for unpaid rent as well as property damage, according to CJOnline.

But the biggest issue wasn't just that Dr. Phil closed the business without paying back his debts. The club had reportedly sold monthly memberships to people who were still being required to pay even though the club was shut down. And not only that, but Dr. Phil left town amid his business troubles. Was he leaving because of the bankruptcy and unhappy clients? Or did the timing just happen to work out that way? It's hard to know for sure, but we do know that Dr. Phil moved to Texas in the mid 1970s, and he even though he was sued over unpaid debt, he reportedly never faced any consequences for what happened in Kansas.

Back in 2015, Dr. Phil McGraw seemed to think that there was someone on his team who was giving information to the press without permission. And in an apparent attempt to get whoever the person was to own up to it, he allegedly kept 300 of his employees in a room, complete with security guards, and berated them. Leah Rothman, a longtime producer on Dr. Phil's show, was one of the people who was reportedly locked in the room and, along with getting yelled at by Dr. Phil, was asked to hand over their phones for inspection.

Rothman complained to HR after the event, but there was apparently no follow through, and she ended up leaving the company. Not long after, Rothman filed a lawsuit against Dr. Phil and his production company for "false imprisonment, whistleblower retaliation, wrongful termination and intentional infliction of emotional distress," per Courthouse News Service.

As you might have guessed when it comes to Dr. Phil, he wasn't one to let things go lightly. As part of the evidence for her side, Rothman accessed some behind-the-scenes footage from the show, and she recorded nine seconds that would apparently have been helpful to her case. Peteski Productions sued Rothman for copyright infringement based on those nine seconds. In 2017, a judge ruled in favor of the production company in terms of the copyright of the videos, essentially preventing Rothman from using them in her defense.