Tag Archives: motion
Eric Payne Responds to District of Columbia’s anti-SLAPP Motion
Eric Payne, the former contracting director of the Office of the Chief Financial Officer, has filed his opposition to the anti-SLAPP motion filed by the District of Columbia and his former boss, Natwar Gandhi. Unlike Dan Snyder and Bradlee Dean, who responded to anti-SLAPP motions by arguing that the SLAPP statute violated the Home Rule (here and here), Payne’s opposition does not attack the statute’s constitutionality. Instead, Payne argues that the statute should not apply because he is not a well-heeled individual aiming to punish a private person, which, he argues, was the purpose of the statute. While Payne’s description …
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Another judge to decide if anti-SLAPP statute applies in federal court
In response to a libel complaint filed by Yasser Abbas, one of the sons of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, the defendants have filed an anti-SLAPP motion and a separate motion to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a claim. (The law firm representing Schanzer is the same one that filed an anti-SLAPP motion on behalf of the City Paper in response to the suit brought by Dan Snyder. Snyder ultimately dismissed his suit before the court ruled on the anti-SLAPP motion).
Can District of Columbia Use Anti-SLAPP Statute Against Defamation Suit?
According to the Washington Post, attorneys representing the District of Columbia, the DC Attorney General and DC Chief Financial Officer Natwar Gandhi have informed the DC Superior Court that they intend to file an anti-SLAPP motion in response to a defamation suit brought by Eric Payne, Gandhi’s former contracting director. The complaint, filed July 30, 2012, alleges that, on June 11, 2012, Gandhi wrote in an email to a reporter that Payne was terminated because of his “poor performance.” It alleges that this “false, derogatory and defamatory” statement was disseminated locally, domestically and internationally by various media outlets. It alleges …
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Update on Dean v. NBC Cases
It has been a few weeks since I checked in on the Dean v. NBC cases. As you may recall, after significant briefing on the anti-SLAPP statute in the Superior Court, the plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed their suit there because they had refiled it in federal court (where Judge Wilkins and Judge Leon had held (here and here) that the anti-SLAPP statute was inapplicable).
Maddow and NBC Move to Dismiss Second Dean Suit
Rachel Maddow and related NBC defendants today moved to dismiss the duplicative federal court suit filed by Dean and others. This second anti-SLAPP motion, necessitated because Dean is forum shopping in federal court instead of litigating his pending case in Superior Court, makes many of the arguments previously made by the defendants in the Superior Court action. Because the case is now pending in federal court, however, and in light of the opinion in 3M v. Boulter, the defendants argue that the anti-SLAPP statute clearly applies in federal court. They quote from Judge Leon’s “Statement of Reasons” in Sherrod v. …
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