General Steel Domestic Sales, LLC v. Bacheller, 2012 CO 68

Bacheller sued General Steel and Discount Steel and their executives for abuse of process, malicious prosecution, and civil conspiracy based on their arbitration filing against him in a private dispute.
The arbitration arose from a covenanted employment-contract clause; the underlying arbitration concerned alleged misappropriation of confidential information to aid a new employer.
The jury awarded actual and exemplary damages on some claims; damages were later trebled for certain corporate defendants under the exemplary damages statute.
The trial court trebled exemplary damages after finding willful and wanton conduct during the pendency of the case; some conduct involved discovery requests, a Rule 21 petition, and attempts to obtain confidential information from a nonparty.
The Court of Appeals affirmed, holding POME did not apply to purely private arbitration and that trebling was not an abuse of discretion; the Supreme Court granted certiorari on related issues.
The Court ultimately held that POME does not apply to the private-arbitration context here and affirmed the trebling, remanding for final judgment consistency.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Does POME apply to an arbitration-based, private dispute?	Bacheller argues POME applies to any petitioning activity.	Defendants contend arbitration is not petitioning the government.	POME does not apply to private arbitration.
Was trebling exemplary damages an abuse of discretion?	Bacheller contends trebling was proper based on willful conduct.	Defendants argue conduct did not show aggravation of damages.	Court did not abuse discretion in trebling.
Should issue preclusion or related findings affect POME applicability?	Arbitrator findings preclude POME prong analysis.	Findings limited to arbitration context.	Not addressed since POME not applicable.

Protect Our Mountain Environment, Inc. v. District Court, 677 P.2d 1361 (Colo.1984) (establishes heightened standard to pursue abuse of process based on petitioning rights)
In re Foster, 253 P.3d 1244 (Colo.2011) (applies POME in attorney discipline context; not determinative for private arbitration)
Noerr Motor Freight, Inc. v. Area Transportation Co., 365 U.S. 127 (U.S. 1961) (Noerr-Pennington: petitioning the government protected, unless sham litigation)
California Motor Transport Co. v. Trucking Unlimited, 404 U.S. 508 (U.S. 1972) (right to petition includes access to courts; protects petitioning activities)
Pennington v. United Mine Workers, 381 U.S. 657 (U.S. 1965) (Noerr-Pennington expansion to lobbying of officials)
Bill Johnson's Restaurants, Inc. v. NLRB, 461 U.S. 731 (U.S. 1983) (sham exception: baseless litigation not immunized)
Harvey v. Farmers Insurance Exchange, 983 P.2d 34 ( Colo.App.1998) (abuse-of-damages trebling reviewed for abuse of discretion)
Qwest Services Corp. v. Blood, 252 P.3d 1071 (Colo.2011) (addresses standard for reviewing exemplary damages)