CARDNO CHEMRISK, LLC vs. CHERRI FOYTLIN & another.
Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts
Suffolk. October 7, 2016. - February 14, 2017.
476 Mass. 479 (2017)
Present: GANTS, C.J., BOTSFORD, LENK, HINES, GAZIANO, LOWY, & BUDD, JJ.
A Superior Court judge erred in denying a special motion to dismiss a defamation action under
CIVIL ACTION commenced in the Superior Court Department on December 16, 2014.
A special motion to dismiss was heard by Edward P. Leibensperger, J.
The Supreme Judicial Court granted an application for direct appellate review.
John H. Reichman, of New York (James E. Grumbach also present) for the defendants.
Megan L. Meier, of Virginia (Samuel Perkins also present) for the plaintiff.
Thomas R. Sutcliffe, Jeffrey J. Pyle, & Sarah R. Wunsch, for American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, amicus curiae, submitted a brief.
LENK, J. On April 20, 2010, an oil rig operated by British Petroleum (BP), known as Deepwater Horizon, suffered a catastrophic explosion causing approximately 4.9 million barrels of1
ChemRisk brought claims for defamation against both defendants, in Massachusetts and in New York.2 The defendants filed a special motion to dismiss the Massachusetts suit under
1. Background. The pertinent facts taken from the pleadings and affidavits of record are these.4 ChemRisk is a scientific consulting company that produces reports and provides expert testimony for clients concerning the environmental risks of their products. In one such report, ChemRisk scientists examined the extent to which cleanup workers responding to the Deepwater
Defendant Cherri Foytlin, a life-long resident of the affected region, works full time as an environmental activist. Defendant Karen Savage also participates in environmental advocacy. Since the occurrence of the oil spill in 2010, both defendants have devoted substantial time to exploring its environmentаl consequences, particularly its effects on cleanup workers, and to advocating on behalf of those adversely affected. One of their efforts in this regard was to write a piece entitled “ChemRisk, BP and Purple Strategies: A Tangled Web of Not-So-Independent Science” that appeared on the Huffington Post‘s “Green Blog,” in which they challenged ChemRisk‘s BTEX report. The “Green Blog” described itself as “[f]eaturing fresh takes and real-time analysis,” and the article appeared there on October 14, 2013, under the byline “Cherri Foytlin, Gulf Coast basеd author and journalist,” along with a note that “Karen Savage contributed to this article.”
The article begins by discussing then-ongoing Federal litigation against BP taking place in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, in which, among other things, BP‘s experts contested the extent of the damages caused by the spill.5 The article asserts that BP and the environmental experts it employs do “not exactly have a reputation for coming clean on the facts.”
The defendants then discuss ChemRisk‘s BTEX report as an example of BP‘s experts not “coming clean,” referring to the study as “independent” and “science” (both in quotation marks). The article goes on to claim, in the passage alleged to be defamatory, that ChemRisk, in connection with an unrelated scientific study unflattering to a different client, had engaged in deceptive tactics:
“As it turns out, ChemRisk has a long, and on at least one occasion fraudulent, history of defending big polluters using questionable ethics to help their clients avoid legal responsibility for their actions.
“In an earlier study, Zhang had found strong links between chromium-6, which was found in Hinkley, California‘s drinking water, and cancer. ChemRisk obtained Dr. Zhang‘s data, and without his knowledge, intentionally manipulated the findings to contradict his own earlier studies.
“The erroneous data was then submitted to the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (JOEM) as though it had been re-worked by Dr. Zhang personally.”6
The article closes by asking whether “anyone will ever . . . make [things] right” in the Gulf Coast.
In response to the blog posting, a ChemRisk representative wrote by electronic mail to the Huffington Post demanding a retraction, and an editor forwarded the message to Foytlin. She responded that she did not believe the piece contained factual errors, and it remained posted on the site, where it drew comments from readers. In April, 2014, six months after the article appeared, ChemRisk filed a defamation action in a New York State court against Foytlin and Savage. In December, 2014, while that case was pending, ChemRisk filed another defamation suit, based on the same set of facts, in the Massachusetts Superior Court. After a judge of the New York Supreme Court allowed the defendants’ motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction, ChemRisk amended its complaint in Massachusetts and engaged in discovery.
In August, 2015, the defendants filed a special motion to dismiss under the anti-SLAPP statute,7 asserting that the claim against them was based solely on their exercise of the right to petition, that they had a reаsonable factual basis for their statements, and that they caused no injury. See Duracraft Corp. v. Holmes Prods. Corp., 427 Mass. 156, 167-168 (1998) (Duracraft).
2. Discussion. ChemRisk contends that the anti-SLAPP statute offers the defendants no protection. Because their article did not address a grievance personal to them, ChemRisk argues that the defendants were not exercising their right to petition, as required by the statute. We disagree. Such a constrained view of the right of petition, a right the anti-SLAPP statute exists to protect, is without basis in the United States or Massachusetts Constitution or in our case law.
a. Statutory background. The object of a SLAPP9 suit is not necessarily to prevail, but rather, through the difficulty and expense of litigation, to discourage and intimidаte individuals from exercising their constitutional right of petition. See Duracraft, 427 Mass. at 161. Although not limiting the statute to such cases, the Legislature enacted
The special motion procedure employs a two-stage framework. See Duracraft, 427 Mass. at 167-168. First, the special movants, here the defendants, must establish that the nonmoving party‘s claim is based solely on the special movant‘s protected petitioning activity. If the special movant so establishes, the burden shifts to the nonmoving party. To withstand the special motion to dismiss, the nonmoving party must show, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the special movant‘s petitioning activity was devoid of any rеasonable factual or legal support and that it caused the nonmoving party actual injury. See Baker v. Parsons, 434 Mass. 543, 544 (2001); Duracraft, supra at 168;
The anti-SLAPP statute provides protection, by its terms, wherever “civil claims . . . against [a] party are based on said party‘s exercise of its right of petition under the [C]onstitution of the United States or of the [C]ommonwealth.”
“[1] any written or oral statement made before or submitted to a legislative, executive, or judicial body, or any other governmental proceeding; [2] any written or orаl statement made in connection with an issue under consideration or review by a legislative, executive, or judicial body, or any other governmental proceeding; [3] any statement reasonably likely to encourage consideration or review of an issue by a legislative, executive, or judicial body or any other governmental proceeding; [4] any statement reasonably
While this definition is “very broad,” Duracraft, 427 Mass. at 162, it has been limited by our construction of the statutory phrase “said party‘s exercise of its right of petition.”
b. Defendants’ threshold burden. Thus, in order to prevail on the special motion to dismiss, Foytlin and Savage must show that the Huffington Post article qualifies as petitioning activity within one or more of the statutory definitions, that the article was an exercise of their own right of petition, and that there was no basis for ChemRisk‘s defamation claim other than the statements in the article.12
i. Statutory categories. The Huffington Post blog posting falls within at least one of the enumerated definitional categories. It formed part of the defendants’ ongoing efforts to influence governmental bodies by increasing the amount and tenor of coverage around the environmental consequences of the spill,13 and it
In addition, it was written against the backdrop of multidistrict litigation pending against BP, and referred to that litigation and to BP‘s efforts to limit its liability for the spill. The article noted, specifically, the actions of one of BP‘s experts, ChemRisk. Given this, it may fit within the second clause of
ii. Defendants’ exercise of their own right of petition. In three cases in our jurisprudence, Kobrin, 443 Mass. at 328; Fisher, 69 Mass. App. Ct. at 361; and Fustolo, 455 Mass. at 861-862, activities that met at least one of the statutorily enumerated categories were nonetheless held not to be protected petitioning because such activities were not established to be the special movant‘s exercise of “its [own] right of petition.”
Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
In the first eighty years of this Republic, for example, petitions flooded Congress on many topics. Among the most prominent were petitions regarding one matter of persоnal concern — the payment of individual Revolutionary War pensions — and those regarding one of public concern — the abolition of slavery. See Higginson, A Short History of the Right to Petition Government for the Redress of Grievances, 96 Yale L.J. 142, 158-165 (1986) (discussing abolitionist petitions); Keenan, Discretionary Justice: The Right to Petition and the Making of Federal Private Legislation, 53 Harv. J. Legis. 563, 585-590 (2016) (discussing war pension petitions). The absolute right to present these petitions regardless of subject matter was never questioned. See Higginson, supra at 159.
B. Case law. Our cases recognize that the anti-SLAPP stаtute, like the constitutional right it safeguards, protects those looking to “advanc[e] causes in which they believe” (citation omitted), Hanover v. New England Regional Council of Carpenters, 467 Mass. 587, 594 (2014), as well as those seeking to protect their own private rights. See Duracraft, 427 Mass. at 164. This is so because it is the right of petition as such that the statute seeks to protect. See, e.g., Hanover, 467 Mass. at 594. To meet its threshold burden, a party bringing a special motion to dismiss must be exercising his or her own constitutional right of petition, but need not be the beneficiary of the particular cause the party seeks to advance. See Kobrin, 443 Mass. at 332 n.8.
In this light, we have held that the statute protects nonself-interested petitioning on behalf of the environment, much like the
In Kobrin, 443 Mass. at 332 n.8, 340, we drew a distinction bеtween people who engaged in petitioning activity “in their own right” and the defendant in that case, whom we classified as simply a “vendor[ ] of services.” One in the latter group does not exercise “its right to petition” (emphasis supplied).
In Fisher, the Appeals Court applied the reasoning of Kobrin to another case involving a witness speaking in his capacity as an employee of the government. There, the court held that а police officer, ordered to investigate a fellow officer for an internal affairs hearing, was simply carrying out the duties of his job — duties specifically assigned to him by his superior — rather than exercising any constitutional right of his own. See Fisher, 69 Mass. App. Ct. at 364-365.
“expressly stated in her affidavit that in writing all her articles, she was ‘always careful to present an objective description of the subject matter, including the positions of both sides where applicable,’ and that while she had personal views on the issues she сovered, ‘they were not reflected in the articles [she] wrote.’ ”
Id. at 867. This objectivity was pivotal to the decision insofar as the reporter was not exercising her own constitutional right to petition when authoring the challenged articles. See id.
c. Reasonable basis in fact. Because they expressed their own opinions, speaking for themselves and at their own behest, Foytlin and Savage have established that they exercised their own right to petition when they wrote the article at issue. Having satisfied their threshold burden, the burden shifts to the nonmoving party, here ChemRisk, who, to defeat the special motion to dismiss, must show by a preponderance of the evidence that the allegations in the blog posting were devoid of any reasonable factual support or arguable basis in law.15 See
Foytlin and Savage, by contrast, offered verified support for their special motion to dismiss, each detailing in affidavits the
3. Conclusion. The denial of the special motion to dismiss is reversed, and the case is remanded to the Superior Court for the entry of a judgment consistent with this opinion and for the award of reasonable attorney‘s fees and costs. The defendants also may file an appropriate application for appellate fees and costs in this court, pursuant to Fabre v. Walton, 441 Mass. 9, 10 (2004).
So ordered.
