SLAPPs: Getting Sued for Speaking Out.

• Author: Weissman, Robert

In 1980, Rick Webb, an environmental activist in West Virginia, complained about DLM Coal Corporation's poisoning of an area river. The company was already known as a "high violator," in the words of one federal inspector, and shortly after Webb reported the problem to the Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA issued a formal notice of intent to revoke DLM's strip mine license. DLM responded not only by defending itself against the EPA notice, but by suing Webb for $200,000 for "defamation."

In other words, Webb got "SLAPPed" - hit with what University of Denver professors George Pring and Penelope Canan call a "Strategic lawsuit Against Public Participation," a suit brought in the guise of slander, libel tortious interference with contract, or other legal claims, but ultimately intended to punish someone who speaks out on a public controversy.

As it happened, DLM's suit backfired; the West Virginia Supreme Court threw it out within a year, using strong language that would deter future SLAPPs in the state. Unfortunately, many SLAPP stories do not end so happily. Local business, development, or other interests frequently succeed in taking a terrible toll on citizen leaders who speak out on important public issues and, more broadly, in exerting a cheating effect on entire communities, First Amendment rights.

Consider the case of Brenda Hill. When she discovered that she and her husband could not get a mortgage because their real estate company had not paid taxes owed on their house, she reported the tax-cheating company to the Washington state government. Encouraged by a tax collector, she uncovered hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid taxes by the company on approximately 300 homes - taxes later collected by the state. The Robert John Real Estate Company SLAPPed Brenda Hill and her husband with a defamation suit, compounding the injury by telling neighbors that the Hills were responsible for some of them losing their homes and having their credit damaged. The stress of the suit, vociferous attacks from the real estate company, and the neighborhood ostracism devastated the Hills. Six years after the episode began, a jury found the Hills not guilty of slander.

The Hill case is instructive, because it illustrates just how insidious SLAPPs are. Hill won the SLAPP in the courtroom, but she lost in the real world. Robert John punished her for challenging its power, sapped her energy and resources in a drawn-out court battle, and issued a...