SLAPP Blog
The information on this website is not, nor is it intended to be, legal advice. The information here is meant to provide general information to the public. We would be happy to consider your specific situation and the possibility of providing legal advice or assistance if you contact us directly.
What To Do When Your Internet Service Provider Tells You Your Information Has Been Subpoenaed
Finding out that someone has issued a subpoena to your internet service provider seeking information about you is scary. But do not despair! This post will give you some information about what this means and what you can do when it happens. You might even be able to “quash” or defeat the subpoena and prevent your internet service provider from giving out your personal information. What It Means First, what it means: When your internet service provider — whether it be AT&T, Comcast, or another internet provider —...
read moreDMCA Take-Down Notices and the Need for Federal Anti-SLAPP Legislation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a great story up on their DeepLinks blog about the latest abuse of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s take-down notice provisions. It seems that Rush Limbaugh has hopped on the bandwagon of public figures who attempt to silence their critics by claiming that those who post commentary regarding a public figure’s controversial statements, and include with that post recordings of those statements, have violated the public figure’s copyrights over the recordings. Such a notice is,...
read moreA Rather Amazing (Possible) SLAPP…
Kudos to TechDirt for catching this rather amazing SLAPP in which a judge, of all people, decided to sue a newspaper for publishing an editorial about a lawsuit the newspaper lost in a case presided over by that very judge. Apparently the judge did not care for the paper’s characterization of his work in the courtroom. Unsurprisingly, the state in which the case was filed, Virginia, has no anti-SLAPP statute. Ridiculous lawsuits like this highlight the need for federal anti-SLAPP...
read moreProposed Arizona Law May Violate First Amendment, Even As Amended (EDITED)
(See edits to the original post at the end of this page.) In the past week or so, an online brouhaha has swelled in response to the Arizona legislature’s passage of a bill that would criminalize any “harassing” and “obscene” communications over the internet. Specifically, the law would make it “unlawful for any person, with intent to terrify, intimidate, threaten, harass, annoy or offend, to use any electronic or digital device and use any obscene, lewd or profane language or suggest any lewd or lascivious...
read moreU.S. Supreme Court Upholds Absolute Immunity for Grand Jury Witnesses
Earlier this week, the United States Supreme Court issued a decision in the case of Rehberg v. Palk upholding absolute immunity for witnesses at federal grand jury proceedings. This was a major win for those of us who believe in a robust right to petition the government under the First Amendment. You can see Timothy Coates’ excellent analysis of the Court’s opinion on SCOTUSblog for more information on the case. California law has long been clear that any statements made before an official government proceeding are immune from...
read moreSnyder v. Phelps and the Public/Private Distinction in First Amendment Law
The relationship between the First Amendment’s protections for free speech and the common law’s tort remedies for victims of defamatory or otherwise damaging statements has always been a complex one. As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan pointed out before she was appointed to the bench, libel law is “subject to a bewildering variety of constitutional standards.” (Private Speech, Public Purpose: The Role of Governmental Motive in First Amendment Doctrine, 63 U. CHI. L. REV. 413, 473 (1996).) Some more recent...
read moreBillionaire Romney Donor Used SLAPP Tactics to Silence Critics (In Case You Missed It)
This was originally published several weeks ago, but in case you missed it, Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com had a wonderful exposé on the SLAPP tactics used by billionaire Romney SuperPAC donor and campaign finance co-chair Frank VanderSloot. (Greenwald’s article here.) VanderSloot had been threatening legal action against journalists who dared to write virtually anything about him — despite his obvious status as a public figure, against whom defamation is extremely difficult to show, and despite the fact the statements in...
read moreWhat Counts as Speech, Anyway?
Practicing law and litigating cases on a day-to-day basis, you often lose sight of big-picture, foundational legal questions. In First Amendment law, however, it is important never to stray too far from these bigger questions, lest they come back to bite you: for example, how do you know that the conduct at issue in a given case was actually “speech” in the first place? If it was not “speech,” then the First Amendment’s free speech protections cannot apply (nor, probably, can the procedural protections of...
read moreLawsuit Challenging Screen Actors Guild Merger a SLAPP?
A group of Hollywood actors has filed suit against the film actors’ labor union in an attempt to prevent what they view as an unfair and hasty merger with another union for performance artists. After considering it for decades, the leadership of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) had seemed ready to complete the merger with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) by putting the matter to a vote of SAG members. Last week, however, the actors, including Martin Sheen and Ed Harris, filed a complaint in California...
read moreYoutube and Client Solicitation: Lawyers Beware!
Very interesting new (unpublished) opinion from the First Appellate District with significant implications for lawyer advertising and client solicitation, especially with regard to Internet and other mass media solicitation. Check out Kate Moser’s analysis on Law.com: http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202540890419&slreturn=1. The opinion can be read here: http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/nonpub/A127544.PDF. The case involved a lawyer, Thomas Howard Clarke, Jr., who recorded and posted a Youtube video clip in which he...
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