The hit reality TV show ‘Love Is Blind’ is facing a lawsuit filed by a former contestant who was on the show during the filming of season five. The season, which was filmed last year, began airing last month on the streaming platform, Netflix.

The plaintiff, Tran Dang. filed her lawsuit against the show's producers, Delirium TV, LLC, and Kinetic Content, LLC. Another contestant on season five, Thomas Smith, is also named in the lawsuit.

Dang's lawsuit accuses Smith of sexual assault including bodily injury while also accusing the TV producers of not taking action after Dang reported her assault. Dang is also accusing the production companies of negligence and false imprisonment.

To understand the claims of the lawsuit, it's important to understand the premise of the hit reality show. The show is based on the concept of participants looking for love without physically seeing each other. Contestants are split up by gender, and potential couples are only allowed to audibly interact with each other while they are separated in private rooms called ‘the pods.’

Contestants that find a suitable match eventually go on to physically meet each other during the highly anticipated reveal. During the reveal, the participants get engaged and then embark on a weeks-long journey with each other before they walk down the aisle in a matrimonial ceremony.

The couples spend the first week after the reveal together on a tropical vacation before they continue on to the next phase of the experiment. It was during the getaway in season five that Dang says her assault took place.

Dang alleges that during her experience on the show, she and Smith paired up in the pods and eventually became engaged. Things would eventually go south as Dang says Smith sexually assaulted her on May 3, 2022, while production did nothing. Dang explains that during the evening, Smith groped her, exposed himself to her, and “forcibly and repeatedly made sexual contact” with her.

When she brought her concerns of discomfort and eventually reported the sexual assault to production, her feelings were dismissed. The lawsuit explains that because the production company engaged in 24-hour surveillance, “most if not all these traumatic acts were filmed by the production crew and within their knowledge.” Still, when she reported her concerns, she was told that it was merely a “lack of attraction” on her part and that her experience was merely a miscommunication.

Dang maintains that because Smith was a participant of the show hired on by the production crew, he was essentially “acting under the supervision” of his employers, the production companies, and that they failed to take “corrective action.”

Dang also maintains that the production companies “are liable for the crimes, assault, battery, and sexual assault of which Plaintiff is a victim because they participated in the tortious and felonious acts directly themselves through the actions of their vice-principal.”

Dang argues that the production companies owed her a legal duty and that duty was violated when they failed to control the security and safety of the set during production, among other failures.

In similar claims made against Love Is Blind in a separate lawsuit, Dang argues that she was falsely imprisoned after being forced to stay in a hotel room without access to the outside world.

Dang says the production company imposed “sequester parameters” which included cast members being unable to leave their hotel rooms, strict meal times that required participants to eat as a group and not individually, and strict rules prohibiting cast members from going into each other's rooms.

Additionally, Dang argued that the production companies served participants excessive amounts of alcohol while limiting amounts of food in an effort to “encourage the participants to engage in striking conversations and actions that would increase viewer ratings.”

The show’s creator. Chris Coelen. responded to the lawsuit in an email to Today News, saying that the crew does not film 24/7. “We are not mounting cameras in their personal living spaces. We don’t do that. We’re like a documentary," Coelen said. "They are alone during periods of time, they are not under surveillance. We do not tell people what to say, what to do, we consistently tell people that this is their journey, this is their life to lead as they choose. We’re there to follow it.”

Coelen also pushed back against the claims of false imprisonment, food restrictions, and the push of alcohol on contestants.

Although season five is currently airing on Netflix, neither Dang nor Smith are listed as participants in the season or are present in the episodes.

Dang is seeking damages for “mental anguish,” “disfigurement,” medical expenses, attorneys’ fees and more.