Nevada May Be About To Lose Its Great Anti-SLAPP Law
from the so-much-for-that dept
We’ve mentioned many times the importance of anti-SLAPP laws in protecting people who are being sued solely to try to shut them up. It’s still a travesty that we don’t have a federal anti-SLAPP law but are reliant on various state anti-SLAPP laws. In case you’re not familiar with them, SLAPP stands for “Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation.” Anti-SLAPP laws basically allow people who are sued to quickly get lawsuits dismissed when it’s obvious that the entire point of the lawsuit is to silence whoever is being sued, rather than for any legitimate legal purpose. For years, California was seen as having one of the best anti-SLAPP laws, but in recent years both Texas and Nevada upped the ante in anti-SLAPP laws, making them even stronger. Nevada’s had a particularly useful feature: it would award “reasonable costs, attorney’s fees and monetary relief” for defendants who were wrongfully hit with SLAPP suits. Basically, it provided a real deterrent against SLAPP suits.
However, just two years after unanimously passing that bill, the Nevada Senate has just unanimously repealed that important provision, in the form of SB 444. If you take a look at the bill, you’ll see it explicitly repeals the fee shifting section. Apparently, some people didn’t like the fact that they might have to pay up for filing bogus lawsuits trying to stifle speech. If that were all it did it, it would be tragic enough, but as Popehat clearly describes, the bill also undermines the rest of the anti-SLAPP law in pretty nefarious ways, making the existing rules toothless.
The bill still needs to go through the state assembly and be signed by the governor, but it’s really disappointing to see Nevada move backward on anti-SLAPP laws just as much of the rest of the country is moving forward. Nevada provided a useful anti-SLAPP model, but apparently someone wasn’t happy about that.
Filed Under: anti-slapp, free speech, nevada, slapp
Comments on “Nevada May Be About To Lose Its Great Anti-SLAPP Law”
I’m ignorant in this regard, instead of creating a new law because the old ones are wrong, why not change the old ones? It seems to me the more laws there are, the more opportunities to interpret them in an unjust way.
Re: Re:
Care to suggest what law to expand to cover the Territory covered by an Anti-SLAPP statute? It has connections to the First Amendment, but its really a new proceedure for how to overturn censorous lawsuits. Even if there was a proceedure that could be expanded, you’d still have all the words of your anti-SLAPP statute, its just now an amendment instead of a new law.
Creating bandaids and making a giant frankenlaw has all the same problems, if not more, as adding new laws. See copyright. If you are expanding a law in theory completely striking the old law and crafting a new one is, in theory, a better way to do it.
Nevada anti-SLAPP
Follow the money. Adelson v. Harris, Stanley, NJDC. Sheldon Adelson lost his defamation suit per Nevada anti-SLAPP law. His appeal was denied in December, 2014.
http://www.nysd.uscourts.gov/cases/show.php?db=special&id=337
http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-2nd-circuit/1687444.html
Re: Nevada anti-SLAPP
THat 2nd circut opinion doesn’t appear to be a denial, it appears to refer the case to the nevada supreme court. And i can’t find a denial by them…
Re: Nevada anti-SLAPP
Stephen Wynn?
http://www.valuewalk.com/2015/03/stephen-wynn-jim-chanos/
the link in the article is bad.
This link goes to the bill page.
http://leg.state.nv.us/Session/78th2015/Reports/history.cfm?ID=969
campain slogan
SLAPP the Gov. he needs it.
Not only that, but they added provisions to make legal fees recoverable if the anti-SLAPP claim is dismissed:
“If the court determines that the defendant filed the special motion to dismiss in bad faith, the court shall award the plaintiff reasonable attorney’s fees and costs incurred in opposing the special motion to dismiss.”
How does something like this pass with no public commentary? Unanimously? Something is really rotten in the state of Denmark.
Please voice your opinion on Nevada SB 444 at https://www.leg.state.nv.us/App/Opinions/78th2015/A/?hc_location=ufi and protect free expression!
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