Opinion ID: 1201961
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Malicious interference with the right to petition the government

Text: The Workers' next claim is that PMI maliciously interfered with their constitutional right to petition the government when the company allegedly told Piqua, Miami County, and the state of Ohio that it was considering Kentucky as an alternative location. According to the Workers, PMI had no plans to move to Kentucky when the statement was made. This statement was apparently a lobbying tactic that PMI used to obtain the most favorable tax treatment possible from Piqua. PMI advances two arguments in defense against the Workers' claims. First, the company argues that the Workers failed to state a claim for malicious interference with the right to petition because the Workers did not allege that they had ever attempted to petition the government. Second, PMI argues that the Workers cannot satisfy the second element of a malicious interference claim because PMI's efforts to persuade Piqua's City Commission to grant it a tax abatement was [sic] privileged under the Noerr-Pennington doctrine, which is discussed in subsection 2 below.
The Ohio Court of Appeals first recognized the tort of malicious interference with the constitutional right to petition the government for redress of grievances in Singer v. Fairborn, 73 Ohio App.3d 809, 598 N.E.2d 806, 814 (1991). In that case, Howard Singer, a property owner in Fairborn, Ohio, proposed an amendment to a zoning ordinance that affected his property. Id. at 808. The city, in consultation with the city planning board, rejected his proposal. Id. Singer later learned that two members of the city planning board had misrepresented to both the planning board and to the city council certain facts relating to the proposal. Id. He sued the city, claiming that the planning board members maliciously and/or recklessly made fraudulent representations and omissions with the intent to cause the planning board and city council to rely upon such representations and to deny Singer's proposed amendment. Id. at 812. Singer alleged that, as a result, he suffered serious financial damage. Id. In finding for Singer, the court created a new cause of action: An action at law should be available to redress the wrong caused to an injured party as a result of such alleged conduct. We hold that the tort of malicious interference with the constitutional right to petition the government for redress of grievances (protected by Section 3, Article I of the Ohio Constitution, and by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution) occurs when a third party, without a privilege to do so, knowingly and maliciously makes a false statement for the purpose of inducing a public body to act or to fail to act, when the act, or failure to act, adversely affects the injured party. Id. at 813-814. The Ohio Court of Appeals therefore held that Singer had stated a claim against the two planning board members, and denied the defendants' motion for summary judgment. Tri-County Concrete Co. v. Uffman-Kirsch, No. 76866, 2000 Ohio App. LEXIS 4749, 2000 WL 1513696 (Ohio Ct.App. Oct. 12, 2000), is the only other Ohio case to discuss this tort. In that case, Tri-County Concrete obtained a property-use variance from the city, which allowed the company to expand its concrete plant. Id. 2000 WL 1513696 at , 2000 Ohio App. LEXIS at . A local resident who opposed the company's expansion wrote a letter to the city that expressed concerns regarding Tri-County Concrete's property-use variance and that contained allegedly false statements about Tri-County Concrete's compliance record. Id. 2000 WL 1513696 at -3, 2000 Ohio App. LEXIS at -6. Tri-County Concrete sued the resident based on Singer, claiming malicious interference with the right to petition the government. Id. 2000 WL 1513696 at , 2000 Ohio App. LEXIS at . The court found that Tri-County Concrete had properly stated a claim, but denied its motion for summary judgment because the resident's statements were constitutionally protected expressions of her opinion, and the company had failed to meet its burden of establishing that the resident had made the statements maliciously. Id. 2000 WL 1513696, at , 2000 Ohio App. LEXIS 4749 at . Like the plaintiff in Singer, Tri-County Concrete had in fact submitted a petition to the government. See Singer, 598 N.E.2d at 808 (proposing to amend a zoning ordinance); Tri-County Concrete, 2000 WL 1513696, at , 2000 Ohio App. LEXIS 4749 at  (proposing a property-use variance). And the defendant's challenged conduct in each case was prompted by, and in direct response to, the plaintiff's petition. See Singer, 598 N.E.2d at 808 (two planning board members made false statements to the city in response to Singer's proposal); Tri-County Concrete, 2000 WL 1513696, at -4, 2000 Ohio App. LEXIS 4749 at -6 (a resident wrote a letter questioning Tri-County Concrete's property-use variance based on accusations that Tri-County Concrete was not compliant with regulations elsewhere). Although neither the Singer opinion nor the Tri-County Concrete opinion explicitly states that a plaintiff must actually petition the government in order to state a claim, the district court below recognized that such a requirement is at the heart of this cause of action: Central to the tort . . . is the idea that a plaintiff has attempted, or planned to attempt, to petition the government for redress of grievances. (citing Singer, 598 N.E.2d at 813-14). The district court's holding that a plaintiff must first exercise the right to petition the government is supported not only by the specific facts of Singer and Tri-County Concrete, but by First Amendment caselaw. The Singer court grounded the tort of malicious interference on the right to petition the government as found in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Article I, Section 3 of Ohio's Constitution. See 598 N.E.2d at 813-14 (citing U.S. Const. amend. I (protecting the right of the people to petition the Government for a redress of grievances), and Ohio Const. Art. I, § 3 (The people have the right to . . . petition the general assembly for the redress of grievances.)). Because the purpose of the tort is to reinforce the First Amendment's protection of the right to petition the government, a review of this court's relevant jurisprudence is appropriate for guidance in resolving this issue. In this and other circuits, a cause of action for violation of the Petition Clause is subject to the same analysis applied to a claim arising under the Speech Clause. Valot v. Se. Local Sch. Dist. Bd. of Educ., 107 F.3d 1220, 1226 (6th Cir.1997); see also Thaddeus-X v. Blatter, 175 F.3d 378, 390, n. 6 (6th Cir. 1999) (citing cases from various federal circuits). The threshold question in a right-to-petition case under the First Amendment caselaw of this and other circuits is therefore whether the plaintiff's conduct deserves constitutional protection. Reichert v. Draud, 701 F.2d 1168, 1170 (6th Cir.1983). The plain language of the First Amendment makes clear that a petition triggers the amendment's protections. Thaddeus-X, 175 F.3d at 387 (finding that, just as `[p]rotected conduct' in the statutory settings is . . . that conduct which the statute defines as protected[,] . . . certain provisions of the Constitution define individual rights with which the government generally cannot interfere  actions taken pursuant to those rights are `protected' by the Constitution); see also Foraker v. Chaffinch, 501 F.3d 231, 235 (3d Cir.2007) (explaining that when one files a `petition' one is addressing government and asking government to fix what, allegedly, government has broken or has failed in its duty to repair, and that [f]ormal petitions are defined by their invocation of a formal mechanism of redress) (citing Connick v. Myers, 461 U.S. 138, 154, 103 S.Ct. 1684, 75 L.Ed.2d 708 (1983)). In light of the foregoing, the Workers must show that their conduct deserves protection under the First Amendment's Petition Clause in order to state a claim for malicious interference with that right. They have failed to make such a showing. In short, the Workers did not petition the government and they took no affirmative steps to do so by, for example, participating in some way in the government's consideration of PMI's tax-abatement proposal. Only petitions to the government, not inaction, are protected and provide a basis for liability where a violation of that right has occurred. Accordingly, the Workers' claim fails at the first step of the inquiry under this court's First Amendment caselaw, upon which the tort is based. The district court therefore correctly held that a petition to the government is a prerequisite for stating a claim of malicious interference with the right to petition.
PMI also argues that the Workers' claim fails because PMI's conduct in lobbying Piqua, Miami County, and the state of Ohio for a tax abatement is protected activity under the Petition Clause of the First Amendment. To protect the right to petition, the Supreme Court has established what has become known as the Noerr-Pennington doctrine. The essence of the doctrine, as set forth in the companion cases of Eastern Railroad Presidents Conference v. Noerr Motor Freight, Inc., 365 U.S. 127, 81 S.Ct. 523, 5 L.Ed.2d 464 (1961), and United Mine Workers of America v. Pennington, 381 U.S. 657, 85 S.Ct. 1585, 14 L.Ed.2d 626 (1965), is that parties who petition the government for governmental action favorable to them cannot be prosecuted under the antitrust laws even though their petitions are motivated by anticompetitive intent. Video Int'l Prod., Inc. v. Warner-Amex Cable Commc'ns, Inc., 858 F.2d 1075, 1082 (5th Cir.1988); see also Westmac, Inc. v. Smith, 797 F.2d 313, 315 (6th Cir.1986) ([G]enuine attempts to influence passage or enforcement of laws are immune from antitrust scrutiny, regardless of the anticompetitive purpose behind such attempts.). Although the Noerr-Pennington doctrine was initially recognized in the anti-trust field, the federal courts have by analogy applied it to claims brought under both state and federal laws, including common law claims of tortious interference. See Video Int'l Prod., 858 F.2d at 1084 (applying the doctrine to business tort claims, and citing cases); Eaton v. Newport Bd. of Educ., 975 F.2d 292, 298 (6th Cir.1992) (extending the doctrine to § 1983 claims). The doctrine is, at bottom, founded upon a concern for the First Amendment right to petition and, therefore, has been applied to claims implicating that right. See Cardtoons, L.C. v. Major League Baseball Players Ass'n, 208 F.3d 885, 889 (10th Cir.2000) (quoting Video Int'l Prod., 858 F.2d at 1084); Video Int'l Prod., 858 F.2d at 1084 (There is simply no reason that a common-law tort can any more permissibly abridge or chill the constitutional right of petition than can a statutory claim such as antitrust.) PMI's Noerr-Pennington argument might well have merit in light of the cases applying Noerr-Pennington's protection to state common law claims sounding in tortious interference, but we need not decide that issue here because the Workers failed to state such a claim, as explained in the Part II.G.1. above.