The podcast “S-Town” was an immediate hit when it was released in the spring of 2017. Millions of people downloaded it; they processed what they heard about the eccentric, sometimes obsessive life of its central character; they were riveted. But some came to believe that they never should have heard the man’s story in the first place.

After all — and this should no longer count as a spoiler — the man, John B. McLemore, died before the podcast came out, and some critics argued that he did not consent to the public airing of intimate details of his private life.

“This use of real life as drama feels exploitative,” Aja Romano wrote of “S-Town” on Vox.

“Morally indefensible,” said Gay Alcorn in The Guardian.

“Was the Art of ‘S-Town,’” an Atlantic headline wondered, “Worth the Pain?”

The qualms that critics raised form the foundation of a lawsuit that Mr. McLemore’s estate filed this month in Alabama Circuit Court against “S-Town” and its associates. The suit’s existence raises an interesting question: Even if “S-Town’s” treatment of Mr. McLemore was at times unethical, was it ever actually unlawful?