Plaintiff sued an attorney and his law firm for defamation over a tweet the attorney posted about one of his cases that read as follows:
[Plaintiff] runs an organization for the benefit of its officers and directors, not shareholders and employees. The RICO suit was not frivolous. The 500K lawsuit is frivolous, however, so buyer be wary.
(Defenant used Twitlonger to account for the number of characters over 140.) The trial court dismissed the defamation lawsuit on an anti-SLAPP motion. Plaintiff sought review with the Court of Appeal of California. The court affirmed the dismissal.
It found that the tweet was nonactionable opinion, holding that “deprecatory statements regarding the merits of litigation are ‘nothing more than the predictable opinion of one side to the lawsuit’ and cannot be the basis for a defamation claim.” Further, insofar as the tweet asserted “[plaintiff] runs an organization for the benefit of its officers and directors, not shareholders and employees,” the attorney was stating his subjective opinion with respect to corporate governance at the plaintiff company. Accordingly, the tweet was not actionable.
Getfugu, Inc. v. Patton Boggs LLP, 2013 WL 4494952 (Cal.App. 2 Dist. August 21, 2013)