Sued after posting video of brawl with neighbor, law partner loses bid for SLAPP protection
The chief of Sedgwick’s cybersecurity practice has lost a round in personal litigation over a brawl with a neighbor.
In an opinion last week that contained a “Reader Discretion Advised” disclaimer because of “an abundance of obscene language,” the California Court of Appeal, Second District, said partner John Stephens can’t use the state’s so-called anti-SLAPP law as a shield against a suit filed in 2012 by his neighbor, Yasser Abuemeira, the Recorder (sub. req.) reports.
Stephens, who described the incident with Abuemeira as a hate crime in cellphone video he distributed, had sought to invoke the statutory protection by characterizing the defamation case Abuemeira filed against him as a strategic lawsuit against public participation, or SLAPP, action.
However, the appeals court saw the situation differently. It ruled that “video-recording of an unseemly private brawl, no matter how wide its distribution, is far removed from a citizen’s constitutional right of petition or free speech involving a public issue.”
