California SLAPP Law

I was recently retained to consult on an anti-SLAPP motion in Orange County Superior Court, and the hearing on the motion was set for today. This particular judge is very good about issuing tentative rulings, but the rulings are often published on-line just shortly before the 1:30 hearing time. Knowing the tentative ruling is essential for oral argument since you know where the judge is going, and can address those specific points. (Truth be told, attorneys are seldom successful in getting a judge to reverse his or her tentative, but sometimes it can be done when the judge has a fundamental misunderstanding of the law that can be cleared up, or has misapplied the law to the facts.)

So my procedure is to open a window to the tentative rulings, which will be the rulings from the prior week, and periodically refresh the window until the current rulings appear. When our tentative ruling finally did pop up, it was just to inform us that the judge had decided to continue the hearing on our motion for a few weeks. This can happen when a judge’s docket doesn’t leave him or her enough time to work up and decide all the motions, or they just think more time is needed to decide a particularly challenging motion. I prefer to think that our legal analysis was so impressive that the judge just wanted more time to savor it, but who knows.

But while I was on the list of tentative rulings, I saw that the judge had decided an anti-SLAPP motion in another case. The ruling piqued my interest, so I pulled a copy of the cross-complaint to see what the case was all about. That will be the subject matter of this article.

I present the case summary and ruling here because they present a great example of how a judge analyzes an anti-SLAPP motion. I get numerous calls and emails from potential clients either wanting to prosecute an anti-SLAPP motion or needing to defend against one, where the facts they want to present are largely speculation. But to borrow an old cliché, an anti-SLAPP motion is where the rubber meets the road, and your allegations must be provable facts. The case also presents a very good example of just how expansive the litigation privilege can be. I will also take this opportunity to discuss the proof necessary for the particular causes of action that were pursued in this case. Read the rest of this entry »