Geiser v. KuhnsGeiser v. Kuhns
The Legislature enacted
The case before us features a sidewalk picket purporting to protest a real estate comрany‘s business practices after the company evicted two long-term residents from their home. The Court of Appeal held the activity at issue to be beyond the scope of anti-SLAPP protection, concluding that the picket did not implicate a public issue and concerned only a private dispute between the company and the residents it had evicted. We granted review to clarify the proper application of FilmOn‘s two-part test. Applying both steps of the FilmOn analysis, we hold that the sidewalk protest constitutes protected activity within the meaning of section 425.16(e)(4). We remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
Mercedes and Pablo Caamal shared a home in Rialto, California for nearly ten years. They purchased the property for $450,000 in 2006 using funds from two mortgages they obtained from Wells Fargo without any сash up front. Both Caamals lost their jobs in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008; by 2012, they had fallen behind on their mortgage payments. In September 2015, the mortgagor held a foreclosure auction, at which an affiliate of Wedgewood, LLC — a company “focused on the purchase, rehabilitation, and resale of distressed properties” — purchased the home for $284,000. Wedgewood filed unlawful detainer actions to evict the Caamals.
The Caamals sought help from the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), an organization whose mission is “to save homes from foreclosures” and to “fight against the displacement of long-term residents.” On December 17, 2015, several ACCE supporters — including the organization‘s Los Angeles director, Peter Kuhns — accompanied the Caamals to Wedgewood‘s heаdquarters. The group requested a meeting with Gregory Geiser, Wedgewood‘s chief executive officer, to discuss the possibility of the Caamals repurchasing their home. They set up a tent in the building‘s lobby and refused to leave until such a meeting transpired. Geiser alleges that one of the activists shoved a Wedgewood employee when that employee attempted to remove the tent. Wedgewood‘s chief operating officer and its general counsel eventually offered to meet with the Caamals if the ACCE activists vacated the premises. The Caamals agreed, and the ACCE activists departed.
On March 23, 2016, the Caamals and several ACCE supporters returned to Wedgewood‘s headquarters and sought another meeting with Geiser. Wedgewood‘s chief operating officer again offered to meet with the Caamals and discuss the situation if the ACCE supporters agreed to disperse. The Caamals again accepted, and the protestors again departed. No agreement was reached at the meeting. Over the next few days, articles describing the controversy appeared in the Huffington Post and in the Spanish-language newspaper La Opinión.
On March 30, 2016, Wedgewood locked the Caamals out of the property. The Caamals again turned to ACCE. Together, they organized a demonstration that evening on the public sidewalk outside of Geiser‘s residence in Manhattan Beach. About 25 to 30 demonstrators attended. According to sworn testimony from Kuhns and the Caamals, the demonstrators “held signs, sang songs, and gave short speeches in protest of Wedgewood“; the record does not disclose the precise content of
Multiple Manhattan Beach police officers were present for much of the demonstration, as was Gilbert Saucedo, a member of the National Lawyers Guild who volunteered to observe. According to Saucedo, the demonstration had been organized by ACCE “to protest unfair and deceptive practices” used by Wedgewood in acquiring the property and in evicting the Caamals from their home. Saucedo relayed this information to the commanding officer at the scene. The officers remained present throughout the demonstration and did not intervene. According to Saucedo‘s declaration, “everyone behaved peacefully and there were no threats of violence at any time.”
Geiser saw things differently. Two days after the demonstration, Geiser filed petitions for civil harassment restraining orders against Kuhns and the Caamals. The petitions characterized the picketing as an “assault” on his home by a “mob” that he believed threatened his and his wife‘s safety. The petitions sought to keep Kuhns and the Caamals at least 100 yards away from Geiser‘s home and from the Wedgewood headquarters. The triаl court issued a temporary restraining order enjoining Kuhns and the Caamals from “picketing or otherwise demonstrating in front of [Geiser‘s] personal residence.”
The litigation attracted more media attention: Breitbart News published an article characterizing the controversy as “a
Kuhns and the Caamals moved to strike the civil harassment petitions under the anti-SLAPP statute. Their motion alleged that the demonstration implicated a public issue because the business practices by which Wedgewоod evicted the Caamals exemplified “one of the many stories of hundreds of thousands who lost their homes since 2008 in the Great Recession.” Geiser voluntarily dismissed the petitions before the motions could be resolved. Within days of the dismissals, Wedgewood issued a press release alleging that it had endeavored to negotiate a settlement with the Caamals and that despite “the company‘s sincere good-faith efforts,” ACCE “unilaterally decided to pursue its own agenda to the detriment of the Caamals.” The press release decried ACCE for “portray[ing] the Caamal family as victims, while exploiting a very emotional issue . . . to further its own agenda.”
Motions for attorneys’ fees followed. In those motions, Kuhns and the Caamals asserted that, as prevailing parties on an anti-SLAPP motion to strike, they were entitled tо full recovery of attorneys’ fees — a total of $84,150 — under
The trial court rejected the argument that Kuhns and the Caamals had prevailed under the anti-SLAPP statute. In the court‘s view, the March 30 demonstrations did not implicate a public issue because they “did not concern people other than the Caamals.” In so holding, the trial court relied primarily upon
We granted review and deferred briefing pending our decision in FilmOn, where we construed the catchall provision of the anti-SLAPP statute.
We transferred this case to the Court of Appeal for reconsideration in light of FilmOn. The Court of Appeal again affirmed, maintaining that the demonstration outside Geiser‘s
The Court of Appeal went on to address the second step of the FilmOn analysis: “[E]ven if we accepted defendants’ contention that the demonstrations concerned the issues of displacement of residents due to residential real estate business practices, gentrification, and large scale fix-and-flip real estate practices leading to the great recession, those demonstrations did not qualify for statutory protection because they did not further the public discourse on those issues.” It justified this conclusion with the same reasoning that animated its first-step
Justice Baker dissented. He noted our observation in FilmOn that “[i]n the paradigmatic SLAPP suit, a well-funded developer limits free expression by imposing litigation costs on citizens who protest, write letters, and distribute flyers in opposition to a local project.” (FilmOn, supra, 7 Cal.5th at p. 143.) In his view, that sentence “suffice[d] almost by itself to point the way to the correct result here. . . . Well-funded developer? Check. Citizen protest of a local (evict-and-flip housing) project? Check. Limits on free expression by imposing litigation costs? Check. . . . [T]his case has many of the hallmarks of vintage SLAPP conduct.”
Turning to FilmOn‘s two-step test, Justice Baker emphasized Kuhns‘s characterization of ACCE as “an entity dedicated to ‘sav[ing] homes from foreclosures and the fight against displacement of long[-]term residents in our communities.’ ” “With that missiоn,” he explained, “ACCE‘s participation in the protest is enough by itself to infer [that] the content of the public protest outside Geiser‘s home concerned unfair (at least as perceived by ACCE) housing practices that displace long-time community residents.” Rejecting the Court of Appeal‘s “parsing” of the Caamals’ declarations, he would have held that the demonstration outside Geiser‘s residence implicated public issues concerning “displacement of long-term community residents by unfair foreclosure and fix-and-flip housing practices.” Proceeding to FilmOn‘s second step, he explained that “[t]he identity of defendants, the audience they
We again granted review.
II.
In FilmOn, we observed that “[o]ur courts have ably distilled the characteristics of ‘a public issue or an issue of public interest.’ (
At the same time, our opinion in FilmOn described as “less than satisfying” various decisions that had rejected anti-SLAPP motions on the ground that the activity from which the litigation arose was not in connection with a public issue. (FilmOn, supra, 7 Cal.5th at p. 149; see ibid., citing Bikkina v. Mahadevan (2015) 241 Cal.App.4th 70, 85 (Bikkina); World Financial Group, Inc. v. HBW Ins. & Financial Services, Inc. (2009) 172 Cal.App.4th 1561, 1572 (World Financial Group); Mann v. Quality Old Time Service, Inc. (2004) 120 Cal.App.4th 90, 111 (Mann).) Although we expressed no opinion as to the appropriate outcomes in those cases, we disapproved their reasoning — in particular, their insistence that the challenged conduct implicated only a private dispute and not an issue of public interest. (FilmOn, at p. 149.)
In Bikkina, an engineering professor accused a student he had once advised of having falsified data in two academic papers on carbon sequestration. (Bikkina, supra, 241 Cal.App.4th at pp. 75–76.) The professor relayed the accusations to the student‘s superiors and colleagues, onсe at an academic presentation and another time at the student‘s place of employment. (Id. at p. 76.) The student sued for libel; the professor responded with an anti-SLAPP motion, arguing that his allegedly libelous statements were entitled to anti-SLAPP protection because they were made in connection with “public discourse on carbon sequestration and its impacts on global warming.” (Id. at p. 77.) The court disagreed. In its view, the professor‘s statements were “about data in papers on carbon sequestration” — specifically, allegations “about contaminated quartz samples and plagiarism in two [academic] papers” — and not about “climate change generally.” (Id. at p. 83.)
In World Financial Group, after several former employees of an insurance company took jobs with a competitor, the insurance сompany sued, alleging that the competitor had unlawfully solicited the former employees and that the former employees were using confidential information and trade secrets unlawfully to benefit the competitor. (World Financial Group, supra, 172 Cal.App.4th at pp. 1565–1566.) The competitor invoked the anti-SLAPP statute, asserting that its
In Mann, two independent contractors for a company spread false accusations to customers and to government аgencies that the company “used illegal and carcinogenic chemicals” for maintaining industrial water systems. (Mann, supra, 120 Cal.App.4th at p. 100.) After the company sued, the contractors asserted that the alleged statements implicated an issue of public interest. (Id. at p. 111.) The court acknowledged that “pollution can affect large numbers of people and is a matter of general public interest,” but held that the statements “were not about pollution or potential public health and safety issues in general, but about [the company‘s] specific business practices.” (Ibid.)
Was the speech at issue in Bikkina about data in papers on carbon sequestration or about climate change? Were the communications at issue in World Financial Group about the defendant‘s own business interests or about the practice and market implications of imposing non-compеte clauses? Were the statements at issue in Mann about one company‘s specific business practices or about pollution and public health and safety? We said in FilmOn that to the extent these decisions focused “on discerning a single topic of speech,” their reasoning was “less than satisfying” because “speech is rarely ‘about’ any single issue.” (FilmOn, supra, 7 Cal.5th at p. 149.)
III.
We review de novo whether Kuhns and the Caamals have met their burden of demonstrating that the activity from which the lawsuit arises falls within the scope of the anti-SLAPP statute‘s protection. (Park v. Bd. of Trs. of Cal. State Univ. (2017) 2 Cal.5th 1057, 1061, 1067.)
The Court of Appeal held that defendants’ demonstration outside Geiser‘s home “focused on . . . a private matter concerning a former homeowner and the corporation that purchased her former home,” and not on “any societal issues of residential displacement, gentrification, or the root causes of the great recession.” We do not see why defendants’ expressive activity fits only one characterization and not both.
The Court of Appeal, applying FilmOn, emphasized that “[t]he only evidence of the specific content of the speeches during the demonstration at plaintiff‘s residence was that the demonstrators demanded plaintiff personally come out of his home.” We find unpersuasive this narrow parsing of the record because it ignores inferences that can reasonably be drawn from the events described in defendants’ declarations.
As an initial matter, even a narrow focus on the words of the declarations yields a clue that defendants’ protest outside Geiser‘s home implicated a public issue. Saucedo, the volunteer observer from the National Lawyers Guild, said in his declaration that the purpose of the demonstration was ” ‘to protest unfair and deceptive practices used by Wedgewood . . . in acquiring the real property of [the Caamals], and evicting them from their home.’ ” As Justice Baker observed, “The reference to ‘practices’ suggests conduct that includes — but extends beyond — the Caamals’ own situation.” (Cf. Alch v. Superior Court (2004) 122 Cal.App.4th 339, 379 [” ‘Pattern-or-practice suits, by their very nature, involve claims of classwide discrimination.’ “].)
Separate and aрart from Saucedo‘s declaration, there are several indicators that the protest implicated public issues
In this context, the picketers’ chant — “Greg Geiser, come outside! Greg Geiser, you can‘t hide!” — cannot be reduced to a bare demand that Geiser emerge from his home. It can reasonably be understood to mean that Geiser should be ashamed of, or accountable for, the business practices by which the Caamals were displaced from their long-term residence, and that Geiser could not hide from that accountability. Some may not find that slogan especially compelling, but as we explained in FilmOn, “our inquiry does not turn on a normative evaluation of the substance of the speech.” (FilmOn, supra, 7 Cal.5th at p. 151.)
Moreоver, there is no evidence that the 25 to 30 ACCE members who participated in this public demonstration at 9:00 p.m. on a Wednesday evening had any personal connection with, or loyalty to, the Caamals in particular. It is common knowledge
The Court of Appeal overlooked the ways in which these contextual considerations inform the expressive meaning of the protest outside Geiser‘s home. It is true that FilmOn, in stating the two-step test for determining whether expressive activity falls within section 425.16(e)(4)‘s protection, said that the first step poses “a question we answer by looking to the content of the speech” and that “[i]t is at the [second] stage that context proves useful.” (FilmOn, supra, 7 Cal.5th at pp. 149–150.) Geiser argues that this language supports the Court of Appeal‘s parsing of the picketers’ chant. But we had no occasion in FilmOn to probe the contours of the first-step analysis, and we made no ruling on any first-step dispute. Instead, we assumed without deciding that the speech at issue did implicate issues of public interest, and we focused our inquiry on the second-step question of whether the defendant‘s statements — in light of the “context” in which they were made, “including audience,
Our central theme in FilmOn was that, in analyzing whether a statement falls within the ambit of
The history of the anti-SLAPP statute is instructive on this point. As originally enacted,
In Tinker v. Des Moines School District (1969) 393 U.S. 503, 504, for example, a group of students wore black armbands to school in a symbolic protest against the Vietnam War. The armbands do not appear to have included any writing. If they were considered in isolation, it would be difficult to tell that they expressed any ideas at all, much less opposition to the Vietnam War. It is in the context of the full controversy — from the students’ coordinated plan to wear the armbands to the school‘s disciplinary response — that the ideas expressed by the armbands come into view. (Id. at pp. 505–506.)
We now make explicit the standard that is implicit in the analysis above: FilmOn‘s first step is satisfied so long as the challenged speech or conduct, considered in light of its context, may reasonably be understood to implicate a public issue, even if it also implicates a private dispute. Only when an expressive activity, viewed in context, cannot reasonably be understood as implicating a public issue does an anti-SLAPP motion fail at FilmOn‘s first step.
B.
We also granted review to decide whether courts should defer to anti-SLAPP movants in determining whether a public
Kuhns and the Caamals insist that “a speaker is in the best position to know the content and purpose of his speech,” whereas Geiser worries that anti-SLAPP movants may intentionally mischaracterize their activities. But these concerns are misplaced. FilmOn‘s first step asks what issue or issues the challenged activity may reasonably be understood to implicate. On that question, the movant‘s beliefs, motivations, or characterizations may be relevant and, if objectively reasonable, will inform the analysis. But they are not themselves dispositive and, if not objectively reasonable, will not carry weight. If a reasonable inference can be drawn that the challenged activity implicates a public issue, then the analysis proceeds to FilmOn‘s second step.
The Court of Appeal‘s parsing of the Caamals’ declarations reflects a related confusion. The court reasoned that because
IV.
We turn now to FilmOn‘s second step. As with its first-step analysis, the Court of Appeal‘s analysis at the second step did not give appropriate weight to the context in which the sidewalk demonstration arose. The Court of Appeal reasoned that because the sidewalk protest was “directed at Wedgewood and [Geiser] . . . for the purpose of coercing Wedgewood into selling back the property,” it “did not further the public discourse on the issues of displacement of residents due to residential real estate business practiсes, gentrification, or large scale fix-and-flip real estate practices leading to the great recession.”
This conclusion is bolstered by the media coverage arising from the controversy and by the press release Wedgewood issued in response to it. That press release accused ACCE, an organization that fights foreclosures and displacement of long-term residents, of “portray[ing] the Caamal family as victims, while exploiting a very emotional issue . . . to further its own agenda.” This language suggests that Wedgewood recognized not only that the protest implicated public issues, but also that the protest bore some connection to the “further[ance]” of ACCE‘s “agenda.” This is not to say that a protest must reсeive media attention in order to be protected under the anti-SLAPP statute. As we explained in FilmOn, “[w]e are not concerned with the social utility of the speech at issue, or the degree to which it propelled the conversation in any particular direction . . . .” (FilmOn, supra, 7 Cal.5th at p. 151.) We simply note that when the conduct that gives rise to a lawsuit attracts such
Finally, we observe that our analysis here at FilmOn‘s second step overlaps with our analysis at the first step. Many of the same contextual considerations that compel us to conclude that the protest implicated public issues also compel us to conclude that the protest furthered public discussion of them. In cases like this one, it may be more efficient to look to the wholе context from which the conduct underlying the lawsuit arises, rather than attempting to parse which considerations fall under which of FilmOn‘s two steps.
CONCLUSION
“Speech is often provocative and challenging.” (Terminiello v. City of Chicago (1949) 337 U.S. 1, 4.) But our legal tradition recognizes the importance of speech and other expressive activity even when — perhaps especially when — it is uncomfortable or inconvenient. The Legislature enacted the anti-SLAPP statute to safeguard that tradition against those who would use the judicial process to chill speech they oppose.
Here, the Court of Appeal erred in holding that the demonstration outside Geiser‘s home did not constitute speech in connection with a public issue under the anti-SLAPP statute‘s catchall provision. We reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeal and remand this matter to that court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
LIU, J.
We Concur:
CANTIL-SAKAUYE, C. J.
CORRIGAN, J.
KRUGER, J.
GROBAN, J.
JENKINS, J.
GUERRERO, J.