For the foregoing reasons, we conclude the Court of Appeal erred in construing section 425.16 as if, contrary to the statute' s plain language, clauses (1) and (2) of subdivision (e) contained an "issue of public interest" limitation. Under section 425.16, a defendant moving to strike a cause of action arising from a statement made before, or in connection with an issue under consideration by, a legally authorized official proceeding need not separately demonstrate that the statement concerned an issue of public significance. [FN 10] Accordingly, we have neither need nor occasion to consider whether ECHO' s statements on which plaintiffs base their causes of action in fact concerned such issues.
The judgment of the Court of Appeal is reversed and the cause remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
Werdegar, J.
We Concur: George, C.J., Mosk, J., Kennard, J., and Chin, J.
I concur in the majority' s determination to reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeal below. Eden Council For Hope And Opportunity, a nonprofit, publicly funded fair housing counseling organization, was plainly acting in furtherance of its right of petition or free speech in connection with a public issue or issue of public interest when it assisted tenants in pursuing legal claims against their landlords, and is thus entitled to seek anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) protection from a landlord's retaliatory lawsuit aimed at punishing the nonprofit organization for assisting tenants in understanding and defending their legal rights.
I dissent from the majority's conclusion that a defendant moving specially under subdivision (e)(1) or (2) of Code of Civil Procedure section 425.16 (hereafter section 425.16 or the anti-SLAPP legislation) to strike a cause of action arising from a statement made before, or in connection with an issue under consideration by a legislative, executive, or judicial body, or any other official proceeding authorized by law, need never further demonstrate that such proceeding involved a public issue or issue of public interest. The anti-SLAPP statute is a powerful tool to be broadly construed to promote ". . . the open expression of ideas, opinions and the disclosure of information." (Beilenson v. Superior Court (1996) 44 Cal.App.4th 944, 956.) It is not, however, generally available to the parties to any civil action, but is instead expressly limited to those lawsuits "'brought primarily to chill the valid exercise of the constitutional rights of freedom of speech and petition for the redress of grievances''in connection with a public issue.' (§ 425.16, subds. (a), (b).)" (Wilcox v. Superior Court (1994) 27 Cal.App.4th 809, 819 (Wilcox).) The majority' s holding in this case belies that carefully delineated legislative purpose and will authorize use of the extraordinary anti-SLAPP remedy in a great number of cases to which it was never intended to apply.
The Legislature has expressly set forth the intent and purpose behind the anti-SLAPP legislation in subdivision (a) of section 425.16: "The Legislature finds and declares that there has been a disturbing increase in lawsuits brought primarily to chill the valid exercise of the constitutional rights of freedom of speech and petition for the redress of grievances. The Legislature finds and declares that it is in the public interest to encourage continued participation in matters of public significance, and that this participation should not be chilled through abuse of the judicial process. To this end, this section shall be construed broadly."
Accordingly, under the anti-SLAPP statutory scheme, "A cause of action against a person arising from any act of that person in furtherance of the person's right of petition or free speech under the United States or California Constitution in connection with a public issue shall be subject to a special motion to strike . . . ." (§ 425.16, subd. (b)(1).)
The legislative intent behind the anti-SLAPP legislation could not be clearer. The Legislature enacted the remedial legislation to curtail the "disturbing increase in lawsuits brought primarily to chill the valid exercise of the constitutional rights of freedom of speech and petition for the redress of grievances" because such lawsuits discourage persons from "participation in matters of public significance" and thereby constitute an "abuse of the judicial process." (§ 425.16, subd. (a).)
The anti-SLAPP legislation was enacted in response to a growing number of meritless lawsuits, usually alleging tort liability, brought against persons for exercising their constitutional rights of petition and freedom of speech. (Sen. Bill No. 1264, 1991-1992 Reg. Sess., enacted as Stats. 1992, ch. 726, § 2.) The term "SLAPP suit," the acronym for "strategic lawsuit against public participation," was coined by two University of Denver professors, George Pring and Penelope Canan, who authored the seminal influential studies on this phenomenon.
In Hull v. Rossi (1993) 13 Cal.App.4th 1763, at page 1769, the court defined a SLAPP suit, plain and simple, as "one brought to intimidate and for purely political purposes."
In Wilcox, supra, 27 Cal.App.4th 809, the court characterized the precise nature of SLAPP suits in the following terms: "The paradigm SLAPP is a suit filed by a large land developer against environmental activists or a neighborhood association intended to chill the defendants' continued political or legal opposition to the developers' plans. . . . [Citations.] [¶ ] The favored causes of action in SLAPP suits are defamation, various business torts such as interference with prospective economic advantage, nuisance and intentional infliction of emotional distress. (Barker, Common-Law and Statutory Solutions to the Problem of SLAPPs (1993) 26 Loyola L.A. L.Rev. 395, 402-403.) Plaintiffs in these actions typically ask for damages which would be ruinous to the defendants. (See, e.g., Protect Our Mountain v. District Court [(Colo. 1984)] 677 P.2d [1361] at p. 1364 [developer sought $10 million compensatory and $30 million punitive damages]; Barker, supra, 26 Loyola L.A. L.Rev. at p. 403 [estimating damage claims in SLAPP's average $9.1 million].)
"SLAPP suits are brought to obtain an economic advantage over the defendant, not to vindicate a legally cognizable right of the plaintiff. [Citations.] Indeed, one of the common characteristics of a SLAPP suit is its lack of merit. [Citation.] But lack of merit is not of concern to the plaintiff because the plaintiff does not expect to succeed in the lawsuit, only to tie up the defendants' resources for a sufficient length of time to accomplish plaintiff' s underlying objective. [Citation.] As long as the defendant is forced to devote its time, energy and financial resources to combating the lawsuit its ability to combat the plaintiff in the political arena is substantially diminished. [Citations.] The SLAPP strategy also works even if the matter is already in litigation because the defendant/cross-complainant hopes to drive up the cost of litigation to the point where the plaintiff/cross-defendant will abandon its case or have less resources available to prosecute its action against the defendant/cross-complainant and to deter future litigation. [Citation.]" (Wilcox, supra, 27 Cal.App.4th at pp. 815-816, italics in original.)
To summarize, "while SLAPP suits 'masquerade as ordinary lawsuits' the conceptual features which reveal them as SLAPP's are that they are generally meritless suits brought by large private interests to deter common citizens from exercising their political or legal rights or to punish them for doing so. (Pring, SLAPPs: Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (1989) 7 Pace Envtl. L.Rev. 3, 5-6, 9.) [fn. omitted.] Because winning is not a SLAPP plaintiff' s primary motivation, defendants' traditional safeguards against meritless actions, (suits for malicious prosecution and abuse of process, requests for sanctions) are inadequate to counter SLAPP' s. Instead, the SLAPPer considers any damage or sanction award which the SLAPPee might eventually recover as merely a cost of doing business. (Barker, Common-Law and Statutory Solutions to the Problem of SLAPPs, supra, 26 Loyola L.A. L.Rev. at pp. 406-407.) By the time a SLAPP victim can win a 'SLAPP-back' suit years later the SLAPP plaintiff will already have accomplished its underlying objective. Furthermore, retaliation against the SLAPPer may be counter-productive because it ties up the SLAPPee' s resources even longer than defending the SLAPP suit itself. (Id. at p. 432; Comment, Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participtaion: An Analysis of the Solutions [(1991)] 27 Cal. W. L.Rev. [399] at p. 403.)" (Wilcox, supra, 27 Cal.App.4th at pp. 816-817.)
In response to the growing incidence of SLAPP suits, legislatures and courts nationwide have sought to fashion procedural remedies to allow for prompt exposure and dismissal of such abusive lawsuits. California's legislative response to the growing problem was the enactment, in 1992, of the anti-SLAPP legislation embodied in section 425.16. The opening paragraph of California's anti-SLAPP statutory scheme leaves no doubt that the
specific intent and purpose behind the remedial legislation was to combat the pernicious problem of SLAPP suits described above, a category of litigation the Legislature deemed an "abuse of the judicial process." (425.16, subd. (a).) [FN 1]
Given the purpose and intent behind the anti-SLAPP legislation, I conclude the Legislature could not possibly have intended that any litigation arising from any written or oral statement made during, or in connection with, any legislative, executive, judicial, or other "official" proceeding should automatically qualify as a SLAPP suit within the meaning of section 425.16.
None of the foregoing well-recognized attributes of SLAPP suits -- i.e., meritless suits brought primarily to obtain an economic advantage over defendants by tying up their resources, driving up their costs of litigation, and ultimately deterring the defendants from exercising their political or legal rights, or punishing them for doing so -- are acknowledged by the majority as having any significance in resolving the issue of statutory construction posed in this case. Instead, the majority suggest that "[a]ny matter pending before an official proceeding possesses some measure of 'public significance' owing solely to the public nature of the proceeding, and free discussion of such matters furthers effective exercise of the petition rights section 425.16 was intended to protect. The Legislature's stated intent is best served, therefore, by a construction of section 425.16 that broadly encompasses participation in official proceedings, generally, whether or not such participation remains strictly focused on 'public' issues." (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 14, italics added.)
I fail to see how the majority' s broad and expansive construction of the statute will effectuate the carefully circumscribed purpose and intent behind the anti-SLAPP legislation explicitly set forth in subdivision (a).
Our task in this case is to construe the provisions of subdivision (e)(1) and (2) of section 425.16 in a manner that best comports with the carefully delineated purpose and intent behind the remedial legislation expressed in subdivision (a). Subdivision (e) provides in its entirety: "As used in this section, 'act in furtherance of a person' s right of petition or free speech under the United States or California Constitution in connection with a public issue' includes: (1) any written or oral statement or writing made before a legislative, executive, or judicial proceeding, or any other official proceeding authorized by law; (2) any written or oral statement or writing made in connection with an issue under consideration or review by a legislative, executive, or judicial body, or any other official proceeding authorized by law; (3) any written or oral statement or writing made in a place open to the public or a public forum in connection with an issue of public interest; (4) or any other conduct in furtherance of the exercise of the constitutional right of petition or the constitutional right of free speech in connection with a public issue or an issue of public interest." (Italics added.)
The majority conclude that under subdivision (e)(1) and (2) there is no separate requirement that the subject inquiry of the legislative, executive, judicial or other "official" proceeding be shown to involve a public issue or issue of public interest. I do not dispute that the language of all four clauses of subdivision (e), taken as a whole, is susceptible of such a literal interpretation. However, such a construction of subdivision (e)(1) and (2) literally reads right out of the statutory scheme the very heart and purpose of this remedial legislation-legislation expressly designed to discourage the filing of a specifically-defined category of lawsuits deemed by the Legislature to constitute an "abuse of the judicial process" because they, by statutory definition expressly set forth in subdivision (a), are "brought primarily to chill the valid exercise of the constitutional rights of freedom of speech and petition for the redress of grievances."
It would be an exercise in futility to attempt to quantify all possible examples of lawsuits based on actionable oral statements or writings which, under the majority's construction of subdivision (e)(1) and (2), will automatically qualify as retaliatory SLAPP suits as a matter of law. Any litigation arising from any word uttered in a court of law, in a legislative or executive proceeding, or in any "official" proceeding in California, will henceforth, under the majority's rationale, automatically constitute a retaliatory SLAPP suit. Any writing made in connection with any such proceeding (for example, every pleading or piece of paper prepared in connection with any legal proceeding transpiring in this state), if actionable on some legal basis and sued upon, will likewise, under the majority's rationale, constitute a retaliatory SLAPP suit as a matter of law. It is highly unlikely the Legislature intended or envisioned that such an enormity of legal actions would automatically qualify as retaliatory SLAPP suits under subdivision (e)(1) and (2) when it enacted legislation specifically designed to curb the abusive practice.
The majority' s overly broad construction of subdivision (e)(1) and (2) will also likely have a significant impact on pretrial civil litigation in California. The special motion to strike a SLAPP suit is a drastic and extraordinary remedy. It not only allows an early summary dismissal of the plaintiff' s complaint, it also cuts off all discovery upon its filing and authorizes an award of attorney fees to the prevailing defendant. (§ 425.16, subds. (b), (c), (g).) The majority' s holding expands the definition of a SLAPP suit to include a potentially huge number of cases, thereby making the special motion to strike available in an untold number of legal actions that will bear no resemblance to the paradigm retaliatory SLAPP suit to which the remedial legislation was specifically addressed.
The decision of the Court of Appeal below (including both the majority and dissenting opinions), an earlier published opinion of the same division of that court (Zhao v. Wong, supra, 48 Cal.App.4th 1114), and the published decisions of several other courts of appeal (see, e.g., Linsco/Private Ledger, Inc. v. Arbitration Services, Inc. (1996) 50 Cal.App.4th 1633; Ericsson GE Mobile Communications, Inc. v. C.S.I. Telecommunications Engineers (1996) 49 Cal.App.4th 1591), have all strived to interpret the overbroad and ambiguous language of section 425.16, subdivisions (b)(1) and (e)(1) and (2), in a manner that preserves the original intent, purpose, and mandate of the anti-SLAPP legislation. In my view those courts have reasonably interpreted subdivision (e)(1) and (2) as requiring that the subject-matter inquiry of the legislative, executive, judicial, or other "offical" proceeding be shown to involve a public issue or issue of public interest so as to preserve and effectuate the overriding mandate of subdivision (a). The broad construction given subdivision (e)(1) and (2) by the majority, in contrast, effectively abrogates that carefully drafted statement of legislative purpose and intent.
In interpreting subdivisions (b)(1) and (e)(1) and (2) of section 425.16 in a manner at odds with the Legislature' s carefully circumscribed definition of SLAPP suits set forth in subdivision (a), the majority invokes a "'longstanding rule of statutory construction, the "last antecedent rule", [which] provides that "qualifying words and phrases and clauses are to be applied to the words or phrases immediately preceding and are not to be construed as extending to or including others more remote."' (White v. County of Sacramento (1982) 31 Cal.3d 676, 680, quoting Board of Port Commrs. v. Williams (1937) 9 Cal.2d 381, 389.)" (Maj. opn., ante, at pp. 8-9.)
Rules of statutory construction such as the "last antecedent rule" can oftentimes prove useful in gleaning legislative intent behind complex statutes, but they are not immutable. To my mind, "[m]ore in point here . . . is the principle that such rules shall always '"be subordinated to the primary rule that the intent shall prevail over the letter."'" (Estate of Banerjee (1978) 21 Cal.3d 527, 539; accord, In re Joseph B. (1983) 34 Cal.3d 952, 957; Wildlife Alive v. Chickering (1976) 18 Cal.3d 190, 195.)" (California Fed. Savings & Loan Assn. v. City of Los Angeles (1995) 11 Cal.4th 342, 350.)
The heart of this anti-SLAPP legislation is embodied in subdivision (a) of section 425.16. This is a case in which a practical reading of the clearly-stated purpose and intent behind this remedial legislation found in subdivisions (a) and (b) should take precedence over a literal reading of the broadly-worded subdivision (e)(1) and (2), since the latter, expansively interpreted, is in patent conflict with the former. Unlike the majority, I conclude the Legislature's primary intent is that this remedial statutory scheme be governed by the restricted scope of the statement of legislative purpose found in subdivision (a). As suggested by the court in Zhao v. Wong, supra, 48 Cal.App.4th at page 1129, "The very fact that the Legislature included a precisely drafted statement of legislative purpose in the statute manifests an intent that the application of the statute be governed by this statement of purpose."
The statutory construction invoked by the majority does, in a literal sense, appear to harmonize clauses (1) and (2) with clauses (3) and (4) of section 425.16, subdivision (e), since the latter two clauses expressly require a separate showing of involvement of a public issue or issue of public interest where the constitutionally-protected written or oral statement was made "in a place open to the public" (subd. (e)(3)) or any other place (subd. (e)(4)). But that same analysis virtually nullifies the precisely drafted statement of legislative intent contained in subdivision (a) when the availability of the special motion is being assessed under subdivision (e)(1) or (2), a matter I believe should be of far greater concern to this court in our effort to reasonably construe and effectuate the Legislature's intent and purpose behind the legislation. "[A] court is to construe a statute '"so as to effectuate the purpose of the law.'" (White v. County of Sacramento (1982) 31 Cal.3d 676, 680.) The purpose of the anti-SLAPP legislation is to make available a drastic pretrial remedy designed to discourage the filing of a specifically-defined category of lawsuits deemed by the Legislature to constitute an "abuse of the judicial process" because they are "brought primarily to chill the valid exercise of the constitutional rights of freedom of speech and petition for the redress of grievances." (§ 425, subd. (a).) The legislation was not intended to make such an extraordinary remedy broadly available in every case involving an actionable statement uttered in a court of law, or in a legislative, executive, or other "offical" proceeding.
All three Justices comprising the panel that decided petitioner's appeal below, majority and dissenting alike, agreed that the anti-SLAPP statute was not intended to immunize every statement made before or in connection with an official proceeding, but was instead intended to protect statements on a public issue made in an official proceeding and statements made in connection with a public issue under consideration or review in an official proceeding. (See also Linsco/Private Ledger, Inc. v. Investors Arbitration Services, Inc., supra, 50 Cal.App.4th at p. 1633; Zhao v. Wong, supra, 48 Cal.App.4th at p. 1127.) I would commend what I believe are the key portions of those two separate opinions, which together conclude, contrary to the holding of the majority here, that subdivision (e)(1) and (2) of section 425.16 must be construed to require a separate showing that the legislative, executive, judicial or other "official" proceeding involved inquiry into a public issue or issue of public interest. The section that follows sets forth the relevant portions of the opinions of the Court of Appeal holding to that effect.