From today's California Court of Appeal opinion in Iloh v. Regents of U.C., decided by Justice Thomas Goethals, joined by Justices Maurice Sanchez & Joanne Motoike; this case is important because it lets anti-SLAPP motions be brought not just by defendants who are being directly sued (here, that's the UC) but also by the "real parties in interest" whose public records request triggered the lawsuit:
The Center for Scientific Integrity (CSI) is an organization that reports on academic retractions and accountability. CSI wrote an article about Constance Iloh, a professor at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), after several academic journals retracted articles Iloh had written due to concerns about possible plagiarism or inaccurate citation references. In a follow-up to that article, CSI sent UCI a records request under the California Public Records Act (CPRA) …, requesting Iloh's postpublication communications with the journals and UCI.
Iloh filed a petition for writ of mandate, declaratory relief, and injunctive relief against UCI to prevent disclosure of her communications, and later added CSI as a real party in interest. She then filed a motion for preliminary injunction to prevent disclosure. Meanwhile, CSI filed a motion to strike Iloh's petition under the anti‑SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) statute.
Our first opinion in this case concerned Iloh's motion for preliminary injunction. The trial court denied that motion on the grounds that Iloh had not established a likelihood of prevailing on the merits, and we affirmed that order.
We now consider CSI's anti-SLAPP motion. The trial court denied the motion, finding that although protected activity may have led to the petition, it was not the "basis" for the petition. We disagree. In issuing the CPRA request, CSI was engaging in newsgathering so it could report on matters of public interest, such as how a public university funded largely by taxpayer dollars resolves quality or integrity problems in its professors' publications. CSI was therefore engaged in protected activity when it issued the CPRA request.
Iloh filed her petition for writ of mandate to prevent UCI from complying with CSI's CPRA request. By targeting and seeking to impede CSI's newsgathering activity, Iloh's petition threatens to chill CSI's speech-related processes like newsgathering; if successful, this could inhibit CSI's exercise of free speech. This is the type of lawsuit the anti-SLAPP statute is designed to address, and it should be stricken if Iloh cannot demonstrate a probability of prevailing on her petition.
