Opinion ID: 217510
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Hospital's Public Relations Campaign

Text: Mercatus next argues that, even if Noerr-Pennington immunizes the Hospital's alleged misrepresentations directly to the Board, it does not apply to misrepresentations made to the public during the course of the Hospital's public relations campaign. We disagree.
To encourage Lake Bluff citizens to put political pressure on the Board, the Hospital launched a broad public relations campaign portraying Mercatus as a threat to charity care and general health care services. As part of this campaign, the Hospital contacted its employees, physicians, and donors to warn them of the danger Mercatus posed to the Hospital's ability to provide care and encouraged them to contact Board members to voice their opposition to the Mercatus physician center. Hospital physicians also sent a letter, allegedly drafted by the Hospital's public relations consulting firm, to a local newspaper saying that the Mercatus center would offer services the Hospital already provided and urging Lake Bluff residents to ask the Board to reconsider its approval of the proposed Mercatus physician center.
This public relations campaign, designed to encourage the public to urge the Board to disapprove Mercatus' plans to develop the Shepard Land, is also sheltered by Noerr-Pennington. Noerr itself held that a public relations campaign to influence government action was beyond the reach of the Sherman Act. 365 U.S. at 140-42, 81 S.Ct. 523. As the Supreme Court has explained, a publicity campaign directed at the general public, seeking legislation or executive action, enjoys antitrust immunity even when the campaign employs unethical and deceptive methods. Allied Tube, 486 U.S. at 499-500, 108 S.Ct. 1931; see id. at 504, 108 S.Ct. 1931 (stating that rounding up supporters is an acceptable and constitutionally protected method of influencing elections). Despite Mercatus' insistence to the contrary, the Hospital's public relations campaign does not lose its protection even if it caused Mercatus injury unrelated to the Board's denial of development approval. It is inevitable, whenever an attempt is made to influence legislation by a campaign of publicity, that an incidental effect of that campaign may be the infliction of some direct injury upon the interests of the party against whom the campaign is directed. Noerr, 365 U.S. at 143, 81 S.Ct. 523; see id. at 144, 81 S.Ct. 523 (Inherent in [fights between competitors], which are commonplace in the halls of legislative bodies, is the possibility, and in many instances even the probability, that one group or the other will get hurt by the arguments that are made.). All but the most stunningly unsuccessful public relations campaigns will persuade at least some members of the public. Those individuals may, in turn, refuse or hesitate to do business with the target, causing that target some injury despite the government's refusal to act. Such injuries are inevitable whenever a business attempts to rally the public to encourage government action that will adversely affect one of its competitors. To make such injuries from public relations campaigns actionable under the antitrust laws would be tantamount to outlawing all such campaigns. Id. at 143-44, 81 S.Ct. 523. That would greatly limit people's ability to rally public support to their causes, thereby limiting the ability of all but the most powerful and influential individuals to petition effectively for redress. Such an invasive regulation of the political process has not been done by anything in the Sherman Act. Id. at 144, 81 S.Ct. 523. [9] Summary judgment for the Hospital regarding its public relations campaign was correct as a matter of law.