CALIFORNIA
California Anti-SLAPP Project
Posted by Evan Mascagni on Mar 26, 2013
CASP has blogged and questioned whether Gerbosi v. Gaims, (2011) 193 Cal.App.4th 435, was the worst decision ever decided under the California anti-SLAPP law, as it held that the mere allegation that defendant’s conduct was criminal means that the anti-SLAPP law does not apply. Yesterday, five amici briefs were filed in Malin v. Singer, a case at the California Court of Appeal, which among other things, could help repudiate Gerbosi. The California Anti-SLAPP Project represents two of the appellants in this case – a woman who has been sued because her lawyer sent a pre-litigation demand letter, and her husband.
The five amici briefs that challenge the trial court’s decision that the demand letter was criminally extortionate and support the broad construction of California’s anti-SLAPP law were filed yesterday by the Association of Southern California Defense Counsel (ASCDC), the Beverly Hills Bar Association, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California (ACLU/SC), and Hinshaw & Culbertson LLP. Professor George (Rock) Pring and the Center for Public Interest Law, among others, signed on to the BHBA brief. Survivors, activists, survivors’ rights organizations, and law firms that represent survivors all signed on to the SNAP brief. …
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests
Written by attorney David Cook of Cook Collection Attorneys.
The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) is a self-help group that supports people who have been victimized by clergy, and helps them try to pick up the pieces of their lives, heal and move forward. SNAP believes that survivors of sexual assault need and deserve compensation for life long therapy and medical expenses, which should be paid without the risk of adverse litigation for bogus claims. This is why SNAP supports survivors’ right to send a demand letter to a predator free of the risk that they will be sued for “extortion.” Many sexual predators are highly aggressive individuals, and would lack any motivation to settle, absent a threat that their misconduct would become public. The thrust of the amicus brief by SNAP is that the threat in a pre-litigation demand letter to reveal misconduct is not extortive if the misconduct itself is the act upon which the claim and ensuing lawsuit are based.
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