Opinion ID: 4441996
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Yacht Club

Text: ¶61. In its order, the circuit court noted that Yacht Club has owned the Yacht Club property only since February 2011. The only allegations made by Yacht Club that are said to have occurred after that time are as follows: (1) Counsel for the defendants made false representations to the Hancock County Board of Supervisors regarding Yacht Club’s access to Nicola Road in February and July of 2011. (2) Cindy Favre told Yacht Club’s employees that they were illegally on the property on August 11, 2011. (3) On September 25, 2011, defendants persuaded Hancock County employees to place a sign on Nicola Road stating “county maintenance ends here.” (4) The gates on Nicola Road still existed during this time, constituting a continuing tort. (5) The defendants made threatening comments to Mike Felter, a JRE/Yacht Club representative, and Yacht Club employees. ¶62. The circuit court disposed of the second, fourth, and fifth allegations using the same continuing tort and standing analyses that it had used for JRE. We agree with the circuit court and its disposition of these claims. For the remaining claims arising out of the first and third allegations, the court applied the Noerr-Pennington doctrine, which we now specifically address. 23 1. Claims barred by the Noerr-Pennington doctrine ¶63. In Harrah’s Vicksburg Corp. v. Pennebaker, 812 So. 2d 163 (Miss. 2001), this Court expressly adopted the Noerr-Pennington doctrine. “The essence of the doctrine is that parties who petition the government for governmental action favorable to them cannot be [held civilly liable] . . . . [including] ‘petitions’ made to the . . . judicial branch[] of government, [e.g.], in the form of administrative or legal proceedings . . . .” Id. at 171 (¶ 30) (quoting Video Int’l Prod., Inc. v. Warner-Amex Cable Commc’ns, Inc., 858 F.2d 1075, 1082 (5th Cir. 1988)).13 “The Noerr-Pennington doctrine applies in state court and to state law claims because it is grounded on First Amendment rights to petition the government.” Id. at 171 (¶ 31). This Court has not had many opportunities to examine the doctrine following our decision in Harrah’s.14 13 Noerr refers to the Supreme Court’s opinion in E. R. R. Presidents Conference v. Noerr Motor Freight, Inc., 365 U.S. 127, 128, 81 S. Ct. 523, 525, 5 L. Ed. 2d 464 (1961). The Noerr Court held that the defendants—major railroad companies—did not violate the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in a campaign to influence government action to advantage itself and to prejudice its competitors, long-distance trucking companies. Id. Pennington derives from United Mine Workers of America v. Pennington, 381 U.S. 657, 659, 85 S. Ct. 1585, 1587, 14 L. Ed. 2d 626 (1965). The Court in Pennington—in the context of actions by large mining concerns to monopolize commerce—similarly found that “[j]oint efforts to influence public officials do not violate the antitrust laws even though intended to eliminate competition.” Id. at 670. The Supreme Court summarized the First Amendment foundation of its holdings in Noerr and Pennington: “[t]he same philosophy governs the approach of citizens or groups of them to administrative agencies (which are both creatures of the legislature, and arms of the executive) and to courts, the third branch of Government. Certainly the right to petition extends to all departments of the Government.” Cal. Motor Transp. Co. v. Trucking Unlimited, 404 U.S. 508, 510, 92 S. Ct. 609, 611-12, 30 L. Ed. 2d 642 (1972). 14 The Harrah’s Court applied the Noerr-Pennington doctrine to protect coordinated and extensive efforts by private actors to influence a government entity to deny a casino permit; specifically, the Court reversed and rendered a multi-million dollar jury 24 ¶64. The circuit court applied the doctrine to all claims related to communications between the defendants and either the board of supervisors or the Hancock County employees, determining that those actions were petitions that were protected under the NoerrPennington doctrine. See id. at 171 (¶ 30). We affirm the trial court’s application of the doctrine to these claims. ¶65. In February and July of 2011, counsel for the defendants petitioned Hancock County, requesting that the board of supervisors deny an extension of Yacht Club’s conditional use permit. On September 25, 2011, the defendants requested that Hancock County employees place a sign on Nicola Road stating “county maintenance ends here.” It is axiomatic that these activities are “petitions” to the government as contemplated in Harrah’s, and the circuit court correctly determined that these actions could not be the basis for civil liability. ¶66. On appeal, JRE and Yacht Club argue that the Noerr-Pennington doctrine creates a privilege (e.g., the spousal communications privilege) and that the privileged verdict that favored plaintiffs who had alleged that various Mississippi casinos “conspired to oppose and defeat a proposal . . . seeking approval of the Mississippi Gaming Commission (MGC) to build a casino and automobile racetrack project on the Big Black River in Warren County.” Harrah’s, 812 So. 2d at 165 (¶ 1). This Court held that the “Noerr–Pennington doctrine applies in state court and to state law claims because it is grounded on First Amendment rights to petition the government. . . . and [is] equally applicable under state law.” Id. at 171 (¶ 31). We—like other courts—found its application outside its anti-trust origins and held that “[t]he doctrine thus bars not only the [parties’] restraint of trade claims in this case, but also their claims for tortious interference and civil conspiracy.” Id. at (¶ 32). See also Video, 858 F.2d at 1084 (“Although the Noerr–Pennington doctrine initially arose in the antitrust field, other circuits have expanded it to protect first amendment petitioning of the government from claims brought under federal and state laws, including section 1983 and common-law tortious interference with contractual relations.” (citing Evers v. Cty. of Custer, 745 F.2d 1196, 1204 (9th Cir. 1984); Gorman Towers, Inc. v. Bogoslavsky, 626 F.2d 607, 614 (8th Cir. 1980))). 25 communications discussed above still can be used as evidence for their claims. For example, JRE and Yacht Club contend that State court decisions interpreting common law privileges, [e.g.,] the judicial privilege [that] protects witnesses and attorneys in judicial proceedings, will show that state courts make the same distinctions: communications can be privileged, actions are not privileged; evidence of communications [that] are privileged can, where appropriate, be offered to show notice or the defendant’s motive and intent in taking actions and making non-privileged statements. ¶67. This Court interprets the Noerr-Pennington doctrine not to operate as a privilege, as the plaintiffs interpret it, but rather as an immunity bar from suit for claims based on the actions or communications of those petitioning the government. Id. at 171 (¶ 32) (“The doctrine thus bars not only the [parties’] restraint of trade claims in this case, but also their claims for tortious interference and civil conspiracy.”). We are mindful that “[t]he Supreme Court has clearly stated that efforts to influence public officials will not subject individuals to liability . . . .” Id. at 172 (¶ 33) (quoting Bayou Fleet, Inc. v. Alexander, 234 F.3d 852, 861-62 (5th Cir. 2000)). See also N.A.A.C.P. v. Claiborne Hardware Co., 458 U.S. 886, 914, 102 S. Ct. 3409, 3426, 73 L. Ed. 2d 1215 (1982) (Supreme Court overturned Mississippi Supreme Court’s award of damages resulting from boycott activity when “major purpose of the [campaign] in this case was to influence governmental action”); Bogoslavsky, 626 F.2d at 614 (“[W]e adopt the district court’s holding that the private citizens and their lawyer were absolutely privileged by the First Amendment to petition for the zoning amendment that caused plaintiffs’ damages.”). Therefore, the plaintiffs’ privileges argument has no merit or relevance. ¶68. The Harrah’s Court included a “sham” exception to the Noerr-Pennington doctrine: 26 We now outline a two-part definition of “sham” litigation. First, the lawsuit must be objectively baseless in a sense that no reasonable litigant could realistically expect success on the merits. . . . [S]econd[,] . . . the court should focus on whether the baseless lawsuit conceals “an attempt to interfere directly with the business relationships of a competitor,” through the “use [of] the governmental process—as opposed to the outcome of the process—as . . . [a] weapon.” Harrah’s, 812 So. 2d at 172 (¶ 34) (quoting Prof’l Real Estate Inv’rs v. Columbia Pictures Indus., Inc., 508 U.S. 49, 60-61, 113 S. Ct. 1920, 123 L. Ed. 2d 611 (1993)). JRE and Yacht Club argue that the defendants’ actions were in bad faith and without claim of right. But, as the circuit court found, the defendants’ actions were not so objectively baseless as to fall within the sham exception. The amount of resources and time used to ascertain the rights and access of different parties to Nicola Road evidences that the litigation and the actions surrounding it were not a sham. Further, as this Court held in Harrah’s, “a plaintiff, as a matter of law, cannot satisfy the first prong of the ‘sham’ test—that the defendants’ petitioning activities were objectively baseless—if those activities were, in fact, successful.” Harrah’s, 812 So. 2d at 173 (¶ 36) (citing Columbia Pictures, 508 U.S. at 60 n.5). Because Hancock County denied a conditional use permit for continued development of the project in 2011 as a result of the defendants’ petitions and the petitions of other concerned parties over several years regarding the development, these actions do not meet the exception. See Favre I, 52 So. 3d 463; see also City of Columbia v. Omni Outdoor Advert., Inc., 499 U.S. 365, 380, 111 S. Ct. 1344, 1354, 113 L. Ed. 2d 382 (1991) (“The ‘sham’ exception to Noerr encompasses situations in which persons use the governmental process—as opposed to the outcome of that process—as an anticompetitive weapon.”) 27 ¶69. Accordingly, regarding Yacht Club, we also find the circuit court did not err by granting partial summary judgment.