Supreme Court Confirms that the SLAPP Clock Starts on Each New Claim

Newport Harbor Ventures, LLC v Morris Cerullo World Evangelism, No. S239777 (Cal. Mar. 21, 2018)

At the end of 2016, the Court of Appeal held that the 60-day clock to file an anti-SLAPP motion runs from the time in which a cause of action first appears in an amended complaint.  So you get 60 days from the original complaint, and then 60 more days to bring a motion to challenge a new cause of action in an amended complaint, but you don’t get 60 more days to challenge a cause of action that appeared before and is just being re-pleaded in an amended complaint. And then the whole thing is subject to the court’s discretion to extend the time under Code of Civil Procedure § 425.16(f).

That holding was somewhat in tension with Yu v. Signet Bank/Virginia, 103 Cal. App. 4th 298 (2002), which suggested at least in passing that the 60-day clock started anew on every claim upon an amendment. The Supreme Court granted review, likely to resolve the apparent split. And now, in a unanimous opinion written by Justice Chin, it affirms the Court of Appeal. Basically for the same reasons that the Court of Appeal ruled as it did.

Affirmed.