SLAPP Madness

Trilogy at Glen Ivy Maint. Assoc. v. Shea Homes, Inc., No D066483 (D4d1 Mar. 19, 2015)

This is a dispute between an HOA and a developer about who was entitled to some license payments from a cable company that used a planned community’s common infrastructure to distribute its services. The contract was signed by the developer, but the services were applied after the control of the common areas passed to the HOA, and the developer tried to keep the cash. The HOA sued the developer for breach of fiduciary duty for diverting the revenues of under the contract to its own use.

As happens far too often these days, the developer filed an anti-SLAPP motion. It made a mostly inscrutable argument that the case didn’t really arise from the HOA’s claim that it failed to fork over the money. Instead, the case purportedly arose from the developer’s denial of an allegation in its answer to an earlier version of the complaint in this very case. Fortunately, neither the trial court nor the court of appeal buy into the BS. 

Affirmed.