Plaintiff contractor sued defendant city attorney for making purportedly defamatory statements about business practices that were the subject of litigation by the city. The Superior Court of San Francisco County, California, denied limited discovery and granted the attorney's special motion to strike under Code Civ. Proc., § 425.16, the anti-Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (anti-SLAPP) statute. The contractor appealed.
The city attorney asserted that his statements were absolutely privileged under the official-duty privilege of Civ. Code, § 47, subd. (a). The court agreed. The comments were made in a keynote speech at a dinner that the attorney attended in his official capacity. As city attorney, he had the authority to express his professional opinion about the justification for and potential merits of the protracted and expensive litigation, as well as to make a public statement that he disagreed with the mayor's proposed unilateral action that would have brought the case to a halt. While the language of EEOC attorney remarks was florid and cast the contractor in an unfavorable light, the comments all concerned the litigation and the attorney's professional opinion that the matter was worth pursuing. As such, the statements related to the policy making that the attorney had to perform and were within the scope of his duties. There was also no error in the denial of limited discovery because the request did not identify any factual issue to be established that could affect the the motion to strike. The contractor purportedly needed the discovery in order to establish defamation.
The court affirmed the decisions of the trial court.
In a mandamus action under California's Public Records Act (PRA), Gov. Code, § 6250 et seq., petitioner challenged an order of respondent San Francisco County Superior Court (California) authorizing real party in interest California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to withhold the names of pharmaceutical companies and other entities CDCR contacted to acquire a prescription drug used by the State in executing condemned inmates.
The trial court also ruled that CDCR could delete information from disclosed documents on the ground it was not responsive to petitioner's PRA request. The court held that the trial court erred in concluding the public interest favoring withholding of the information sought by petitioner outweighed that favoring disclosure, because the record contained no evidence that disclosure of the names of pharmaceutical companies and others from whom CDCR sought to obtain sodium thiopental would threaten privacy and security interests, nor a basis in fact or law upon which to apply either the conditional privilege for confidential information set forth in Evid. Code, § 1040, or the deliberative process privilege, which the trial court considered in the weighing process mandated by Gov. Code, §§ 6254 and 6255. The public interest served by revealing the names of the pharmaceutical companies and others from whom CDCR sought to obtain sodium thiopental clearly outweighed that favoring nondisclosure. Redactions from disclosed documents of information assertedly nonresponsive to petitioner's PRA request were erroneously approved, as CDCR failed to establish that the information was nonresponsive.
The court reversed the judgment insofar as it authorized CDCR to withhold documents identifying pharmaceutical companies and other entities from which CDCR sought to obtain the prescription drug at issue and to redact portions of disclosed documents the agency deemed "not responsive" to petitioner's PRA request. The court remanded the case to the trial court for further proceedings.
