A recent decision from Florida’s Second District Court of Appeal has teed up for the state Supreme Court the issue of whether a trial court’s denial of an anti-SLAPP motion is immediately appealable.
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The South Florida Sun Sentinel did not defy a court order last week when it published confidential information about Nikolas Cruz’s education record, lawyers for the news organization argued.
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A private prison contractor has threatened to sue the civil-rights activists mounting protests against it.
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Attorneys for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press filed an anti-SLAPP motion, asking a Florida state court to dismiss a defamation lawsuit against the President of News for Univision over an opinion column he published about a Colombian attorney.
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A developer brought suit against a Florida county and residents in connection with a project.
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From Phelps Dunbar LLP at Lexology:
"Effective July 1, 2015, Florida will have broader prohibitions against SLAPP suits, or “strategic lawsuits against public participation.” Many states have enacted anti-SLAPP laws to prevent companies and government entities from filing frivolous lawsuits against their critics. For example, when a citizen or consumer posts a negative comment about a governmental program or a company’s services, the entity subject to the criticism may choose to file a defamation or infringement lawsuit against the individual who posted the comment. Such lawsuits have become more prevalent due to the popularity of websites geared towards consumer reviews, such as yelp.com."
Read more from Lexology here.
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From Kimberly Chow at RCFP:
"A Florida bill that would revise the state’s narrow anti-SLAPP law to provide a greater level of protection for speakers against meritless lawsuits has passed both houses of the legislature and now awaits Gov. Rick Scott’s signature.
Florida’s anti-SLAPP law, Fla. Stat. § 768.295, currently only provides for the speedy dismissal of SLAPP suits when such frivolous suits are filed by government entities. In practice, “strategic lawsuits against public participation,” or SLAPPs, are filed by a wide range of plaintiffs, with far more deleterious effects on speakers than just those suits brought by the government.
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Writing a product review on Amazon is usually a pretty mundane process: Pick a star rating, leave a few words, hit “submit,” and immediately forget about it. For one man, though, the process just got a whole lot more interesting (in the bad way). Eight months after a Florida man panned a product online, the company’s lawyer delivered a fresh new legal threat to his doorstep — retract the review, or face a libel suit.
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Techdirt writes about an Orlando police chief who threatened a blogger critical of her.
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In November of 2009, Miami law professor Donald Marvin Jones sued the popular website Abovethelaw.com, along with its parent company and editor David Lat, alleging $22 million in damages. Jones had been arrested on suspicion of soliciting an undercover officer for sex, and Abovethelaw commented on the arrest, calling Jones the “Nutty Professor.”
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A media company filed a federal lawsuit against a NC woman for defamation, trade libel and “tortious interference with business relationship.
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A developer filed a $25 million defamation lawsuit against a Miami real estate agent who blogged that the developer “had gone bankrupt in the 1980s and was headed for a fall with the upheaval in the condo market.”
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A real estate development company delivered a stern warning to a resident: Take down his two-week-old website, www.verandaparknews.com or it would sue.
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