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Archive for the ‘Ethics’ Category

Terrebonne Sheriff, denied immunity for unconstitutional raid on critical blogger, prudently decides to settle lawsuit

Posted in Corruption, Crime, Ethics, Judges, Lawsuits, Politicians on September 7, 2017| 14 Comments »

Karma, you gotta love it.

A lawsuit brought by a Houma couple against Terrebonne Parish Sheriff Jerry Larpenter has been settled for an undisclosed amount, according to a story posted online by the Houma DAILY COURIER.

The couple, Houma police officer Wayne Anderson and wife Jennifer, filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in New Orleans after Larpenter obtained what was quickly determined an unconstitutional search warrant in order to carry out an equally unconstitutional raid on the couple’s home and to cart off computers and cellphones while investigating ExposeDAT, an anti-corruption website that was critical of Larpenter.

Also named as defendants in the Anderson’s lawsuit were Parish President Gordon Dove, the Terrebonne Parish government, the Terrebonne Levee District and levee board member and local businessman Tony Alford. Alford and the levee district were subsequently dismissed by the Andersons and U.S. District Judge Lance Africk dismissed Dove and the parish as defendants after the parties reached a $50,000 settlement, the newspaper said.

The order signed by Africk dismissed the lawsuit without prejudice, which means the suit can be re-instituted should Larpenter not honor the settlement terms.

Wayne Anderson, whose blog was critical of Larpenter and which prompted the illegal raid, told New Orleans WWL-TV, “I think the sheriff’s finally learned that he can’t bully people and violate people’s constitutional rights. In our case, he stepped on the wrong people’s constitutional rights because we knew our rights. Hopefully, he thinks twice the next time he gets his feelings hurt.”

The paper said that Larpenter filed a request in May to dismiss the lawsuit on the grounds of qualified immunity.

That has to go down as one of the more ironic twists in the entire episode: Larpenter, ignoring the Constitutional guarantee of free speech of citizens as laid out in the First Amendment, took offense at criticism contained in a web blog and raided a person’s home on no more substantial probable cause than that and yet thinking he was protected by qualified immunity.

Judge Africk correctly denied that motion on July 19 and Larpenter, seeing the handwriting on the wall, chose to settle rather than go to trial and most likely subject himself to another judicial lecture on the Constitution.

Terrebonne, this is your sheriff.

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17-year-old girl raped in Union Parish jail cell files lawsuit; meanwhile, AG still hasn’t completed probe after 17 months

Posted in Attorney General, Crime, Ethics, Lawsuits, Media, Politicians, Prison on September 7, 2017| 8 Comments »

The 17-year-old girl who was raped twice in a Union Parish jail cell in April 2016 has filed suit in Third Judicial District Court, according to a copy of the lawsuit obtained by LouisianaVoice.

The Third JDC comprises the parishes of Lincoln and Union.

Meanwhile, nearly 17 months after the rapes occurred, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry’s office still has not completed its investigation.

The girl, who was thought to be high on meth, was being held in an isolation cell when Demarcus Shavez Peyton, 28, of Homer, who was awaiting sentencing after being convicted of aggravated rape in a separate case, was allowed to leave his cell and assault the girl twice in her cell.

Named as defendants in her lawsuit are the Union Parish Detention Center, the Union Parish Police Jury (which operates the detention center), the Union Parish Detention Center Commission (made up of Union Parish Sheriff Dusty Gates, District Attorney John Belton and Union Parish municipal chiefs of police).

The lawsuit says another prisoner, Darandall Eugene Boyette was also allowed into her cell with the intent to sexually assault her but “departed before committing any criminal act.”

Because the district attorney is a member of the commission that governs the detention center, Belton rightfully recused his office from any investigation and instead, requested the attorney general’s office to conduct the investigation.

And while Attorney General Landry on Tuesday issued one of his regular press releases in which he “applauded President Donald Trump’s decision to phase out of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program,” he still has not wrapped up what should be a routine investigation of a rape that occurred in the limited confines of a jail cell, a case where he knows the identities of the victim, the rapist, and witnesses.

Apparently, Landry is far too busy issuing press releases to worry about the victimization of a 17-year-old girl—or the obvious liability to which the defendants are exposed.

Among the claims asserted by the victim through her Monroe attorney, Jeffrey D. Guerriero, are:

  • Failure to provide a reasonably safe and secure facility for the custody of women, especially minor women;
  • Failure to protect female inmates from male sexual assault;
  • Failure to provide adequate training to employees and personnel;
  • Failure to property monitor, observe and keep proper surveillance of prison inmates;
  • Failure to properly monitor and supervise employees;
  • Failure to provide, implement and enforce proper policy and procedure for the reporting of, handling, investigation and treatment care rendered to female inmates who have been victims of sexual assault while incarcerated;
  • Failure to provide proper services to inmates who have been victims of sexual assault while incarcerated;
  • Failure to properly secure inmate cell doors;
  • Allowing convicted rapist inmates to move within the facility unmonitored and without supervision;
  • Inadequate or negligent supervision of inmates within the facility;
  • Failure to provide adequate staff to supervise and monitor inmates;
  • Failure to provide adequately trained staff and employees to maintain a safe environment for female inmates, particularly minor female inmates.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Jeff Landry on Thursday (Sept. 7) issued a press release saying, “All welfare fraud needs to be found and ended.”

But he can’t seem to complete a simple rape investigation after nearly 17 months.

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LouisianaVoice has obtained federal court documents on plaintiff in SLAPP lawsuit against Welsh alderman Perry

Posted in Corruption, Crime, Ethics, Fraud, Lawsuits, Public Records on September 7, 2017| 4 Comments »

Subsequent to Wednesday’s report that one of the people suing Welsh Alderman Jacob Colby Perry for defamation because Perry had caused harm to his “long-standing positive reputation in his community and parish” was himself a convicted felon, LouisianaVoice has obtained copies of the judgment, the terms of his pleas agreement and the discharge of his supervised release.

William Joseph Johnson, Jr., his sister, his mother and the Welsh police chief, using the same attorney, each filed Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP) actions against Perry after Perry and other members of the Welsh Board of Aldermen raised questions about the police department’s budget and other apparent irregularities in town operations. The petitions are all strikingly similar:

Click to access 3c6d9d70-6f92-486f-8178-f23865a4d4b4.pdf

Click to access b60afd4c-5495-4c08-8937-42ee11b353a7.pdf

Click to access a376b7f0-23ca-4ec8-9e38-3a2011944359.pdf

Click to access 49ad6c5b-fc47-4d03-ad27-4f7c88f0d5f0.pdf

Johnson’s mother, Carolyn Louviere, is mayor of Welsh and is the subject of a voter recall petition.

As for Johnson’s claim of a “long-standing positive reputation,” documents from U.S. District Court, Western District of Louisiana, indicate that Johnson entered into a plea bargain on three of 14 federal indictments on Nov. 20, 2011.

The three charges to which he entered guilty pleas all occurred in 2006 and stemmed from his defrauding a Natchitoches hotel of $77,000 by means of identity theft. Specifically, he entered guilty pleas to:

  • Two counts of bank fraud;
  • Nine counts of counterfeit securities;
  • Fourteen counts of aggravated identity theft.

Counts 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, and 13 were dismissed as part of the plea bargain.

PLEA AGREEMENT

The charges stemmed from his theft from a Natchitoches hotel where he had gained employment using stolen identity and then proceeded to perpetrate fraud against the hotel.

He was sentenced to 34 months imprisonment on counts 2 and 9 to run concurrently, and 24 months as to count 14 to run consecutive to counts 2 and 9. He was also sentenced to five years supervised release upon release from prison and was ordered to make restitution in an amount to be determined by the court after a review of evidence and not necessarily limited to the amounts stolen from victims.

JUDGMENT

A concurrent sentence is not served but entered as a record and used in determining further sentencing. That means he was to serve only 34 months combined for counts 2 and 9. Consecutive terms are served, meaning his combined sentence was 58 months, or four years, 10 months.

At the time of his sentencing, Johnson was wanted on similar charges in Spokane, Washington, where he was said to have used identity theft to con his way into employment as financial controller for the Davenport Hotel in that city, a position that gave him access to the hotel’s financial operations.

The plea agreement was signed before Federal Judge Dee D. Drell by Johnson, his attorney, Billy J. Guin, Jr., of Shreveport, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Cytheria D. Jernigan.

Johnson was paroled on March 30, 2015 and began his term of supervised release for a period of five years. On July 27 this year, on recommendation of his probation officer, Jill R. Wilson, Judge Drell discharged him from supervised release.

DISCHARGE OF SUPERVISED RELEASE

So now, his stellar reputation on the line, Johnson, along with his mother the mayor, his sister and the police chief, is going after a 24-year-old alderman for the Town of Welsh whose main concern is protecting the town’s treasury.

All things considered, who could blame Perry for being a little skittish about the town’s finances?

 

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Welsh alderman learns cold hard facts of small town politics when questioning PD budget: SLAPPed, CRAPPed, BLAPPed

Posted in Budget, Commissions, Corruption, Ethics, Finances, Lawsuits, Media, Politicians, Prison, Public Records, Revenue, Transparency on September 6, 2017| 13 Comments »

Jacob Colby Perry has been CRAPPed (Crazed Reaction Against Public Participation), BLAPPed, (Blowhard Letter Against Public Participation) and SLAPPed (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) as reward for his efforts to obtain answers from the Welsh City Council, particularly as those answers pertain to expenditures of the Welsh Police Department which consistently (as in every month) exceeds the department’s budget.

And he’s a member of the town’s board of aldermen, whose job it is to oversee the town’s various budgets, including that of the Police Department.

Welsh, for those who may not know, is a small town situated on I-10 in the middle of Jefferson Davis Parish. Jeff Davis Parish is located between Acadia Parish on the east and Calcasieu Parish on the west and sits immediately north of the easternmost part of Cameron Parish.

The town has 3,200 residents.

And 18 police cars (one for every officer to take home from work). The budget for those patrol cars, which are not all purchased in the same fiscal year, is $169,000.

Other line items in the police department’s budget include:

  • Police Chief—$100,990 (of which amount, $76,120 is for the Chief Marcus Crochet: $55,000 salary, $4,207.50 in Social Security payments, and $16,912.50 for his retirement);
  • Police Patrol—$593,077 ($32,948 per vehicle);
  • Police Training—$8,000;
  • Police Communications—$295,342 ($16,400 per officer);
  • Police Station and Buildings—$52,300.

BUDGET

All that for a town of 3,200.

From June 2016 through February 2017, the monthly expenditures and monthly overages (in parenthesis) for the police department were:

  • June 2016: $105,681.35 ($24,345.77);
  • July 2016: $79,595.23 ($1,840.35);
  • August 2016: $71,348.81 ($10,085.77);
  • September 2016: $132,857.05 ($51,421.47);
  • October 2016: $78,881.21; ($2,554.37);
  • November 2016: $108,732.82 ($24,297.24);
  • December 2016: $77,098.58 ($4,337.00)
  • January 2017: $79,945.66 ($1,489.92);
  • February 2017: $84,139.83 ($2,704.25)

TOTAL: $818,280.54 ($82,360.32).

That’s a nine-month average expenditure of $90,920.06, or an average monthly overage of $9,484.48.

Projected out for the entire fiscal year, the police department’s expenditures would be $1,091,040.72 or a projected fiscal year overage of $113,813.72.

OVERAGES

Did I mention that Welsh is a town of 3,200 living souls?

It’s no wonder then, that Alderman Jacob Colby Perry, a mere stripling of 24, along with a couple of other aldermen have questions about Crochet’s budget, particular when it was learned that funds generated from traffic enforcement on I-10 is deposited in an account named “Welsh Police Department Equipment & Maintenance.”

An attorney general opinion directed to Crochet and dated Dec. 18, 2015, makes it clear that “a police department is not permitted to establish a separate fund for the deposit of money generated from traffic tickets.” Louisiana R.S. 33:422 “requires that the fines collected from tickets issued by a police officer in a Lawrason Act municipality (which Welsh is) be deposited into the municipal treasury and, thus, within the control of the mayor, clerk, and treasurer.”

The balance in that account is more than $178,000. That’s over and above all the line items in the police department’s budget cited earlier. And he never tapped those funds to cover his overages, instead calling on the board of aldermen to cover his expenditures.

“The mayor (Carolyn Louviere), along with her staff and the town clerk, knew months prior that the chief of police was over-budget and would continue to exceed his budget,” Perry said. “They did nothing.”

Instead, she and the board acquiesced to Crochet’s request of a 37.5 percent increase in his base pay (from $40,000 to $55,000) and his total compensation, including salary and benefits, of $76,120.

SALARIES

Perry said that after he and three other aldermen addressed the matter of the police department’s budget in a meeting at which Crochet was not in attendance, “the town clerk and the mayor immediately followed up by informing the chief of police. In the next meeting, he (Crochet) entered with an entourage consisting of at least 10 police officers in uniform, a neighboring municipality’s chief of police and financial adviser, and his wife. We were yelled at and intimidated.

Perry said he felt Crochet’s demeanor at that meeting may have served its purpose in that the board of aldermen amended the police department budget by $253,000, pushing the department’s budget to more than $1.2 million. “The Town of Welsh is in disrepair,” Perry said.

For his trouble, several things have happened with Perry, none of them good:

  • A recall petition was started against him;
  • Postcards were mailed to Welsh residents that depicted Perry and Andrea King, also a member of the Board of Aldermen, as “terrorists” (See story HERE) and that Perry violated campaign finance laws by failing to report income from a strip club in Texas of which he was said to be part owner and which allegedly was under federal investigation for prostitution, money laundering and drug trafficking (See story HERE);
  • He was removed from the Town of Welsh’s FACEBOOK page;
  • He has been named defendant in not one, not two, not three, but four separate SLAPP lawsuits.

Those filing the suits were Mayor Louviere; her daughter, Nancy Cormier; her son, William Johnson, and, of course, Police Chief Crochet. All four SLAPPs were filed by the same attorney, one Ronald C. Richard of Lake Charles. Can you say collusion?

Each of the nuisance suits say essentially the same thing: that Perry besmirched the reputations of her honor the mayor, both of her children, and the bastion of law enforcement and fiscal prudence, Chief Crochet.

The reason I call them nuisance suits is because Perry, as a member of the board of aldermen, is immune from libel and slander suits under the state’s anti-SLAPP statute.

As the crowning touch, the recall petition was initiated while Perry was in Japan on military orders, serving his annual two-week training.

But the plaintiffs, while trying to shut Perry up, have their own dirty laundry.

It has already been shown that the police chief is not the most fiscally responsible person to be handling a million-dollar budget. Eighteen police cars in a town of 3,200? Seriously? More than $76,000 in salary and benefits—not counting the additional $6,000 he receives in state supplemental pay? Consistently busting his department’s budget? Keeping traffic fine income in a separate account when it should go in to the town’s general fund?

And Mayor Louviere, who inexplicably wants to build a new city hall when the town is flat broke, is currently under investigation by the Louisiana Board of Ethics, according to the Lake Charles American Press AMERICAN PRESS. She also wants to shut down a bar that just happens to be adjacent to a business owned by her son.

And her son, William Joseph Johnson, who Perry says used his mother’s office in an attempt to shut the bar down, has a story all his own.

Johnson, back in 2011, was sentenced in federal court to serve as the guest of the federal prison system for charges related to a $77,000 fraud he perpetrated against a hotel chain in Natchitoches between October 2006 and January 2007. And that wasn’t his first time to run afoul of the law.

At the time of his sentencing for the Louisiana theft, he was still wanted on several felony charges in Spokane County, Washington, after being accused of being hired as financial controller for the Davenport Hotel of Spokane under a stolen identity, giving him access to the hotel’s financial operations and then stealing from the hotel.

The only thing preventing Spokane authorities from extraditing him to Washington, Spokane County Deputy Prosecutor Shane Smith said, was that “we just don’t have the funds to bring him back.” The Spokane Review, quoting court documents, said, “Police believe Johnson is a longtime con artist who has swindled expensive hotels across the country.” (Click HERE for that story.)

“William Joseph Johnson, Jr. remains on federal probation,” Perry said. “He has yet to pay back all of the restitution that he owes.

In his lawsuit against Perry, Johnson says he “has a long-standing positive reputation in his community and parish” and that he (Johnson) suffered “harm to reputation (and) mental anguish.”

So we have Perry, a student at McNeese State University, being BLAPPed (Blowhard Letters Against Public Participation) with the postcard campaign; CRAPPed (Crazed Retaliation Against Public Participation) with Crochet’s appearance with 10 uniformed officers to berate Perry at a board of aldermen meeting and an incident in which Perry said Johnson confronted him in an aggressive manner following a board meeting, and SLAPPed (Strategic Legal Action Against Public Participation) with the four lawsuits.

All this in a town of 3,200.

Former U.S. House Speaker Tip O’Neill had no idea how accurate he was when he said, “All politics is local.”

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CRAPP, BLAPP, or SLAPP—The desired result is the same: to intimidate, block all questions, criticisms & records requests

Posted in Boards, Commissions, Corruption, Courts, Ethics, Judges, Lawsuits, Media, Politicians, Public Records, Transparency on September 5, 2017| 5 Comments »

In the evolving efforts by public officials (mostly elected and appointed political toadies) to prevent you from having unfettered access to public records, three tactics have emerged:

  • CRAPP (Crazed Retaliation Against Public Participation).

This is the strategy employed by Sheriff Jerry Larpenter of Terrebonne Parish.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/08/30/louisiana-sheriff-jerry-larpenter-illegally-uses-criminal-libel-law-to-unmask-a-critic/?utm_term=.e2a1770cf5a0

When a local blogger posted critical stories about him and his political cronies, the good sheriff of Terror-Bonne got a friendly judge (who must’ve received his law degree from eBay) to sign off on a search warrant whereby Larpenter could conduct a raid on the blogger’s home.

All the offending blogger, who obviously was a dangerous criminal on a par with John Dillinger, Willie Sutton, and Bonnie and Clyde, had done was illustrate how the family tree of Terror-Bonne elected officials has no branches—that it’s all just one main trunk, sucking the life out of everything around it.

Deputies seized his laptops and about anything else they could lay their hands on in an attempt to discourage him from writing further disparaging comments about the fine public servants of Terror-Bonne, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution notwithstanding.

Of course, a federal judge quickly ruled the raid unconstitutional and gave Larpenter a stern lecture on Civics—not that it did any good.

And then there’s the second approach:

  • BLAPP (Blowhard’s Letter Against Public Participation).

With this method, a public body like, say, the Gravity Drainage District 8 of Calcasieu Parish, has an attorney, say Russell Stutes, Jr., to write a nasty letter to a citizen, say, Billy Broussard, who had performed extensive work for the drainage district for which he was not paid following Hurricane Rita, threatening Broussard with jail time if he persisted in making public records requests. https://louisianavoice.com/2016/12/05/hurricane-cleanup-contractor-threatened-by-attorney-over-requests-for-public-records-from-calcasieu-drainage-district/

Stutes wrote that all Calcasieu Parish employees “have been instructed not to respond to any additional requests or demands from you associated with the project,” neglecting for the moment that any citizen has a right to request any public record and that it is patently illegal for a public official, i.e., the custodian of the records, to ignore a legal request.

“Accordingly, the next time any Calcasieu Parish employee is contacted by you or any of your representatives with respect to the project, we will proceed with further civil actions and criminal charges,” Stutes continued. “A rule for contempt of court will be filed, and we will request injunctive relief from Judge (David) Ritchie. Given Judge Ritchie’s outrage at your frivolous claims last year, you and I both know the next time you are brought before him regarding the project, it will likely result in you serving time for deliberately disregarding his rulings.”

Stutes ended his asinine communiqué by writing, “Consider this your final warning, Mr. Broussard. The harassment of Calcasieu Parish employees must completely and immediately cease. Otherwise, we are prepared to follow through with all remedies allowed by law.”

I wrote then and I’ll say it again: What a crock.

  • SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation)

This is the preferred ploy being employed these days to shut down criticism—or inquiries—from the nosy citizenry.

The first two (CRAPP and BLAPP) are the acronyms created in the not-so-fertile mind of yours truly, although the events are very real as are SLAPP actions that are more and more often employed. The most recent cases involve two such lawsuits right here in Louisiana.

In the 3rd Judicial District (Ouachita and Morehouse parishes), judges, of all people, filed a lawsuit against a newspaper, The Ouachita Citizen, for seeking public records, even while admitting the records being sought were indeed public documents. https://lincolnparishnewsonline.wordpress.com/2015/05/19/judges-admit-dox-are-public-records-in-suit-against-newspaper/

More recently, Louisiana Superintendent of Education John White filed a SLAPP lawsuit against a citizen, James Finney, who was seeking information related to school enrollments and statistical calculations. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mercedes-schneider/la-superintendent-john-wh_b_10216700.html

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, a nonprofit association dedicated to assisting journalists created in 1970, says SLAPPs “have become an all-to-common tool for intimidating and silencing critics of businesses, often for environmental and local land development issues.”

https://www.rcfp.org/browse-media-law-resources/digital-journalists-legal-guide/anti-slapp-laws-0

The California Anti-SLAPP Project (CASP), a law firm specializing in fighting SLAPPs and in protecting the First Amendment, says protected speech and expression on issues of public interest that may be targeted by SLAPPs include:

  • Posting a review on the internet;
  • Writing a letter to the editor
  • Circulating a petition;
  • Calling or writing a public official;
  • Reporting police misconduct;
  • Erecting a sign or displaying a banner on one’s own property;
  • Making comments to school officials;
  • Speaking a public meeting;
  • Filing a public interest lawsuit;
  • Testifying before Congress, the state legislature, or a city council.

SLAPPs are often brought by corporations, real estate developers, or government officials and entities against individuals or organizations who oppose them on public issues and typically claim defamation (libel or slander), malicious prosecution, abuse of power, conspiracy, and interference with prospective economic advantage. https://www.casp.net/sued-for-freedom-of-speech-california/what-is-a-first-amendment-slapp/

CASP says that while most SLAPPs are legally meritless, “they can effectively achieve their principal purpose (which is) to chill public debate on specific issues. Defending a SLAPP requires substantial money, time, and legal resources, and thus diverts the defendant’s attention away from the public issue. Equally important, however, a SLAPP also sends a message to others: you, too, can be sued if you speak up.”

In 1993, Florida Attorney General Robert A. Butterworth released a Survey and Report on SLAPPs in that state. Five years later, in urging the Florida Legislature to enact a strong anti-SLAPP statute, the Attorney General wrote: “The right to participate in the democratic process is a cherished part of our traditions and heritage. Unfortunately, the ability of many Floridians to speak out on issues that affect them is threatened by the growing use of a legal tactic called a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation or SLAPP. A SLAPP lawsuit is filed against citizens in order to silence them. The theory is that a citizen who speaks out against a proposal and is sued for thousands of dollars for alleged interference, conspiracy, slander or libel will cease speaking out. And, as demonstrated in a report prepared by this office on SLAPPs in 1993, the tactic is successful. Even though the SLAPP filers rarely prevailed in court in their lawsuits, they achieved the desired aim—they shut down the opposition.” http://news.caloosahatchee.org/docs/SLAPP_2.pdf

Fortunately, there are options for those who are victimized by SLAPP lawsuits.

The Public Participation Project and the Media Law Resource Center grade each state on the basis of existing or absence of anti-SLAPP laws.

Whereas only five states (Texas, California, Oregon, Nevada and Oklahoma) and the District of Columbia have what are considered as excellent anti-SLAPP state laws with grades of “A,” Louisiana is one of seven states (Georgia, Vermont, Rhode Island, Indiana, Illinois, and Kansas are the others) which have what are considered to be good anti-SLAPP laws on the books. These seven states were given a grade of “B.”

Sixteen states, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, North and South Dakota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama, North and South Carolina, Ohio, New Hampshire, and New Jersey, have no such laws and are rated “F.”

A key feature of anti-SLAPP statutes is immunity from civil liability for citizens or organizations participating in the processes of government, including:

  • Any written or oral statement made before a legislative, executive, or judicial body or in any other official proceeding authorized by law;
  • Any written or oral statement made in connection with an issue under consideration or review by a legislative, executive, or judicial body or in any other official proceeding authorized by law;
  • Any written or oral statement made in a place open to the public or in a public forum in connection with an issue of public interest; and
  • Any other conduct in furtherance of the exercise of the constitutional right of petition or the constitutional right of free speech in connection with a public issue.

When a citizen or organization is sued for protected activities, anti-SLAPP statutes provide for expedited hearing of a special motion to dismiss the SLAPP suit. The burden is placed on the plaintiff to prove that the defendants had no reasonable factual or legal grounds for exercising their constitutional rights and that there was actual injury suffered by the plaintiff as a result of the defendants’ actions. No action can be taken in furtherance of a SLAPP suit unless the plaintiff first demonstrates to the court that there is a “probability” of success. Attorneys’ fees and court costs are awarded to SLAPP defendants who win dismissal.

TOMORROW: A look at how one city council member’s questions produced not one, but four separate SLAPP lawsuits in a coordinated effort shut him up.

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