It's the Disloyalty, Not the Litigation

Gaynor v. Bulen, No. D070907 (D4d1 Jan. 23, 2018)

This is a probate dispute where some beneficiaries of a trust are suing another beneficiary for breach of fiduciary duty for allegedly improperly meddling with the decisions of the trustees. A handful of the alleged bad acts consist of participation in earlier phases of the probate litigation. So the Meddler brought an anti-SLAPP motion, which the trial court denied, and now the Court of Appeal now affirms.

In a decision that heavily relies on the Supreme Court’s decision in Park, the Court holds that the incidents of litigation participation in the complaint are simply examples in an overarching claim that is based on improperly and disloyally favoring some beneficiaries over the others. That conduct is just evidence of a claim that is not fundamentally based on petitioning. 

Meddler tries to avoid that argument by relying on Baral, another recent Supreme Court case, which says that courts can parse allegations within a claim and excise factually and legally unsupported allegations that, although not constituting the whole claim, nonetheless are based on protected activities. But the Court here says Baral can’t parse as finely as Meddler wants it to without running afoul of Park. At the end of the day, the claim is based on Meddler’s disloyalty, with the litigation activity simply being evidence of that, not the crux of the claim.

Affirmed.