§ 47(b) Privilege Yields to the Insurance Fraud Prevention Act

People ex re Alzayat v. Hebb, No. E066471 (D4d2 Dec. 19, 2017)

In this case, Plaintiff has brought a qui tam case alleging that his employer and a supervisor violated the Insurance Frauds Prevention Act by making false statements in an incident report and lying in a deposition in worker’s comp proceeding. Generally, that kind of statement is protected by the litigation privilege in Civil Code 47(b). But the Court here finds that the IFPA is a specific statuary scheme that foresees assigning liability based on false statements made in connection with, among other things, workers’ comp proceedings. Under those circumstances, § 47(b) would make the IFPA inoperable in significant part. When that happens, courts have found § 47(b)’s general privilege to yield to the more specific statutory scheme where the Legislature expressed an intent that liability for the statement should, in fact, apply.

Reversed.