Better Call Saul is being sued by a real-life tax company for ripping off their trademarks and image. Jimmy McGill and Kim Wexler’s scamming activity was ramped up in Better Call Saul season 6 when they unleashed an elaborate (and ultimately deadly) scheme to bring down Howard Hamlin. As part of that plot, they enlisted the reluctant aid of Jimmy’s old targets the Kettlemans.
As Better Call Saul fans well-remember, Jimmy and Kim first encountered Betsy and Craig Kettleman back in season 1 in a plotline concerning county treasurer Craig’s embezzlement of money and attempts to weasel off the hook for his crimes. Season 6, episode 2 “Carrot and Stick” then found Betsy and Craig several years on from those events, now running a shady tax company called “Sweet Liberty Tax Services,” advertising their fly-by-night outfit with a familiar-looking giant inflatable Statue of Liberty. After initially refusing to get involved in Jimmy and Kim’s Howard-related schemes, the Kettlemans were finally forced to play patsies when Kim threatened to turn them in to the IRS for scamming old people.
Now it seems AMC and Better Call Saul will have to bring in their own legal counsel after being sued by a real tax company over the fictional Sweet Liberty Tax Services. As reported by The Wrap, Liberty Tax Services has filed suit claiming the show intentionally misused and ripped off its image, further alleging that the show’s shady-tax-service storyline represents “dilution, defamation, disparagement, and injurious falsehoods.” The suit reads in part:
“Out of all the names Defendants could have used for the tax business portrayed in Episode 2, they decided not to be original at all, but instead rip off the famous Liberty Tax trademarks, which have been used for over 25 years, and mimic an actual Liberty Tax location just by adding the word ‘Sweet’ in front of Liberty Tax’s trademark.”
![Better Call Saul Facing Lawsuit For Ripping Off Real Tax Company](https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/The-Kettlemans-In-Front-of-Sweet-Liberty-Tax-Services-In-Better-Call-Saul-season-6.jpg)
Better Call Saul obviously used the Sweet Liberty Tax Services name in part as an excuse to introduce the inflatable Statue of Liberty that would later stand perched above Saul Goodman’s own strip mall law office. Of course it’s entirely possible that writers also intended to jab at certain real tax services with their depiction of Sweet Liberty as a shady operation. And that arguably makes the storyline defensible as a work of satire.
It remains to be seen how this suit against Better Call Saul ultimately plays out. But if Jimmy McGill were defending the show in court, no doubt some unorthodox methods would come into play as he attempted to get his clients off the hook. Indeed a big part of the fun of Better Call Saul is the way the show works real-life legal matters into the drama, doing deep dives into the law books to find obscure details that help enrich the storytelling. It’s arguable though that Better Call Saul writers should have done a deeper dive into their own imaginations when naming the Kettlemans’ shady company, given the legal fallout that has now resulted from their work.