Klinedinst’s Shaughnessy and Garbacz secure published appellate decision

Klinedinst PC attorneys Robert Shaughnessy and Gregory Garbacz secured an excellent result and a published appellate decision when defending an attorney and her law office after they were sued by the opposing party in an unlawful detainer action that the attorney was prosecuting for her own client, a mobile-home park. Because the attorney-defendant was sued by a nonclient who alleged causes of action against her based on her representation of another party, California’s anti-SLAPP statute at Code of Civil Procedure section 425.16 applied to bar the nonclient’s meritless claims. (SLAPP is an acronym for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation.) Klinedinst attorneys filed a special motion to strike the complaint under California’s anti-SLAPP law in the Los Angeles Superior Court. After the trial court erroneously denied the motion in a ruling that failed to consider controlling authority, including Thayer v. Kabatek Brown Kellner LLP (2012) 207 Cal.App.4th 141, 158, Klinedinst attorney, Robert M. Shaughnessy, appealed the decision. Under California’s anti-SLAPP law, a moving defendant must show that the claims leveled by the plaintiff arise from protected speech or petitioning activity (Referred to as “prong one” of the anti-SLAPP law). If the moving defendant makes the showing, the plaintiff must present evidence showing the claims have at least minimal merit. (Referred to as “prong two.”) The trial court denied the motion despite the fact that the moving papers established that the claims against the attorney-defendant arose from protected petitioning activity on behalf of her client, and the opposition failed to present any evidence showing that the plaintiff’s claims had even minimal merit.

In a published decision, filed on August 8, 2025, the Second District reversed the trial court with directions to enter an order granting the special motion to strike, and to determine the fees and costs that plaintiffs must pay to the attorney defendant based on the fee provision in California’s anti-SLAPP law. The Second District summed up the issues of the case concisely: “If you are a party in litigation, your tactic of suing opposing counsel is apt to trigger swift retaliation: an anti-SLAPP motion. If opposing counsel are helping their clients petition for legal relief, your motion may fall within anti-SLAPP’s prong one, as an attack on petitioning activity. If so, then prong two will require you to produce evidence our claims have minimal merit. If you cannot show minimal merit, you may have to pay your opponent for the trouble you have caused. This case fits this pattern.” (Opinion, p. 1-2 (emphasis in original).) The published decision will provide needed guidance to trial courts, and to lawyers defending lawyers who are sued for assisting their own clients with petitioning activity in California courts.