Source: https://dcslapplaw.com/page/2/
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 18:51:50+00:00

Document:
Two years ago, I blogged about the anti-SLAPP special motion to dismiss filed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute in response to a non-party subpoena served by the Virgin Islands Attorney General. CEI maintained the subpoena, which sought documents relating to climate change and ExxonMobil, was aimed at silencing debate on a matter of public interest. So it filed an anti-SLAPP special motion to dismiss the subpoena.
The DC anti-SLAPP statute requires a party to first show the “claim” arises from an act in furtherance of the right of advocacy on issues of public interest. The statute defines “claim” as “any civil lawsuit, claim, complaint, cause of action, cross-claim, counterclaim, or other civil judicial pleading or filing requesting relief.” CEI argued the subpoena fell comfortably within this definition.
In an opinion issued last Friday, the Virgin Islands court reached the same conclusion. Like the VanderSloot court, the Virgin Islands court concluded that, by addressing subpoenas in DC Code §16-5503 (the special motion to quash section), without including subpoenas in the definition of “claim,” the DC Council must not have intended “claim” to include subpoenas. Like the VanderSloot court, the Virgin Islands court held the first five examples of “claim” in the statutory definition (“any civil lawsuit, complaint, cause of action, cross-claim or counter-claim”) all differ from a subpoena because they involve a request for relief from the court, and not a request for information from a party or other person.
Next, the Virgin Islands court held the term “other judicial pleading” in the statutory definition of “claim” did not include subpoenas because Superior Court Rule 7(a) limits pleading to “complaints and answers, replies to counterclaims, answers to cross-claims, and third party complaints and answers.” Finally, like the VanderSloot court, the Virgin Islands court held that, because subpoenas are not a “judicial” filing or a “filing requesting relief,” as those terms are commonly used in judicial proceedings, the subpoena did not qualify under the catch-all provision of the “claim” definition. The court thus denied CEI’s motion to dismiss. It also denied CEI’s motion for fees under the anti-SLAPP statute, holding that, because the statute did not apply to the subpoena, CEI was not a prevailing party.
The DC anti-SLAPP statute allows the court to award fees and costs to the non-moving party if the motion “is frivolous or is solely intended to cause unnecessary delay.” The Virgin Islands Attorney General argued that standard was satisfied here because it had already agreed to withdraw the subpoena before CEI filed its anti-SLAPP special motion to dismiss. The court accepted CEI’s argument that the threat of future litigation (if the Virgin Islands re-served the subpoena) did not render the motion moot/frivolous, so it denied the Virgin Islands’ request for fees.
The D.C. anti-SLAPP statute has most often been used in cases involving claims of defamation. See Boley v. Atlantic Monthly Group; Moore v. Costa. It has also been successfully invoked in cases involving defamation-related claims. See, e.g., Farah v. Esquire Magazine, Inc. (false light invasion of privacy, Lanham Act, misappropriation invasion of privacy); Forras v. Rauf (false light, assault, intentional infliction of emotional distress). We can now add intentional interference with existing contracts and tortious interference with business expectancies to the list of claims against which a successful anti-SLAPP special motion to dismiss has been made.
In February, I wrote about Fridman v. Bean LLC, where “three international businessmen” claim they were defamed by certain statements in one of the reports comprising the “Trump Dossier.” The defendants (Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson, who allegedly retained Christopher Steele to research any Russian connections to Trump) filed an anti-SLAPP special motion to dismiss the suit.
The plaintiffs have filed their opposition to the anti-SLAPP special motion to dismiss, and the defendants have filed their reply brief. Beyond the usual sparring over whether Mann means the statute can again apply in a federal court case, both briefs raise interesting arguments worth exploring in more detail.
In its Abbas decision, the DC Circuit held that, because it believed the standard contemplated by the DC anti-SLAPP statute conflicted with the standards required under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 12 and 56, the statute could not apply in a federal court diversity case. Although the DC Court of Appeals in Mann then stated that “the standard to be employed by the court in deciding whether to grant the motion” “is substantively the same” as that under the Federal Rules, two DC federal district judges have nevertheless held the DC anti-SLAPP statute still cannot apply in a federal court diversity case (discussed here and here).
A reader recently brought another opinion to my attention: issued in January in Democracy Partners v. Project Veritas Action Fund. There, Democracy Partners sued various defendants for allegedly infiltrating its offices through misrepresentations, stealing confidential documents, and secretly recording hours of conversations.
The Democracy Partners opinion finds this distinction to be without a difference. The court explained that, in its Abbas decision, the DC Circuit applied the Supreme Court’s Shady Grove opinion, which has not been limited to diversity jurisdiction cases. Thus, the court concludes that Shady Grove and, by extension, Abbas, apply to a case based on federal question jurisdiction in the same way they apply to a case based on diversity jurisdiction.
The Democracy Partners opinion explains that “any other conclusion would create an irrational distinction in the treatment of identical state law claims.” Of course, one could argue that, by refusing to apply the DC anti-SLAPP statute in federal court, although it applies to the same claims in Superior Court, the DC Circuit has “create[d] an irrational distinction in the treatment of identical state law claims”! Anyway, the DC federal district court, for the first time I believe, holds the DC anti-SLAPP statute does not apply to those DC claims brought in a federal court case grounded in federal question jurisdiction.
For those hoping that, after the DC Court of Appeals’ Mann decision, DC federal district judges would again apply the DC anti-SLAPP statute in a diversity suit, as multiple judges had done before the DC Circuit’s Abbas decision, they are going to have to wait longer. A second DC federal district judge has now concluded that – despite Mann – the DC anti-SLAPP statute cannot apply in a DC federal court diversity case.

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