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Consumer
Cause, which has been battling an oil company's attempts to squelch
a Proposition 65 lawsuit before it ever got started, has won a
decisive victory from the California Supreme Court. The high court,
as part of a trio of recent cases examining so-called strategic
lawsuits against public participation, upheld the dismissal of
Equilon Enterprises litigation against Proposition 65 plaintiff
Consumer Cause.
The case involves 78 sixty-day notices for
alleged petroleum leaks at Shell and Texaco gas stations in Southern
California. Equilon, the successor to the two oil companies, did not
wait to be sued but filed a lawsuit seeking a declaratory judgment
that the Consumer Cause notices were inadequate. Consumer Cause
responded that Equilon's lawsuit was an illegal SLAPP.
Unanimously, the Supreme Court in its' August
29 ruling held that defendants do not have to show it was the
plaintiffs' intent to chill constitutionally protected rights, as
long as the defendant's exercise of those rights provided the basis
for the lawsuit.
The state's law limiting certain lawsuits
thwarting the exercise of constitutional rights nowhere states that,
in order to prevail on an anti-SLAPP motion, a defendant must
demonstrate that the plaintiff brought the cause of action
complained of with the intent of chilling the defendant's exercise
of speech or petition rights, said the opinion, written by Justice Kathryn
Mickle Werdegar.
Equilon had argued that the anti-SLAPP
statute was intended by lawmakers to combat only actions intended to
chill speech. But Werdegar wrote there was noneed to add a new
limitation on anti-SLAPP motions, as she said the oil company had
proposed. Under the law, which allows defendants to bring a special
motion to strike a lawsuit considered a SLAPP, all that must be
shown is that the action is arising from any act in furtherance of a
person's exercising free speech or petition rights and that the
plaintiff has not demonstrated a probability of success. "We
are well advised not to upset the Legislature's carefully crafted
scheme for disposing of SLAPPs quickly and at minimal expense to
taxpayers and litigants," Werdegar wrote.
The ruling completed a clean sweep
for Consumer Cause in the case. Both the trial court and the
California Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District, had also
ruled in the enforcer's favor (see Prop 65 News, January 1
& 15, 2001, p.4). Leslie Landau of the San Francisco
offices of Bingham McCutchen argued the case for Equilon. Morse
Mehrban of Los Angeles represented Consumer Cause. Edward Weil,
a deputy attorney general, argued in support of Consumer Cause. The
case document cited in this article is Equilon v. Consumer Cause (available
from P65LR).
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