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Appeals Court Rejects Anti-SLAPP Motion In Suit Growing Out of Sikh Temple Elections

By Howard M. Friedman

In Grewal v. Jammu, (CA App., Jan. 11, 2011), a California appellate court rejected defendants' motion to strike plaintiff's defamation claims under California's anti-SLAPP statute.  The claims grew out of a series of articles published in the Punjab Times relating to contentious elections of members of the Supreme Council of the San Francisco Bay Area Sikh Temple.The articles made various allegedly false charges of religious and financial wrongdoing by plaintiff, including charges that plaintiff had referred to the Temple school as a training school for terrorists and students of the Taliban. In a decision that is highly critical of misuses of the anti-SLAPP statute, the court concluded that the statute did not apply here because plaintiff had carried his burden of showing that he was likely to succeed on the merits of his defamation claims. The court described defendants' anti-SLAPP motion as one "that should never have been brought, generating an appeal that ... is utterly lacking in merit."

Full post as published by Religion Clause on January 13, 2011 (boomark / email).