Jiang v. NBCUIVERSAL Media, LLC

Background

The lawsuit arose from three NBC Bay Area reports about a dispute between Baiting Jiang, her former landlord, and members of the landlord’s family. The reports discussed allegations of harassment, eviction proceedings, restraining-order proceedings, and the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on landlords and tenants. Jiang initially asserted defamation claims, but her later complaint contained more than forty claims and added her mother, Lanjiao Qin, as a plaintiff. The opinion says both plaintiffs represented themselves and proceeded without paying filing fees under the federal fee-waiver statute.

The defendants moved to dismiss. The court treated the order as both an evaluation of Jiang’s complaint under the usual pleading standard and an initial review of Qin’s claims under the statute governing fee-waiver cases. The court noted that Qin had declined magistrate-judge jurisdiction, while Jiang and the defendants had consented to it.

Qin’s standing

The court explained that constitutional standing requires a plaintiff to allege an actual injury, a connection between that injury and the defendant’s conduct, and a likelihood that a favorable decision would remedy the injury. Qin was not named or mentioned in the news reports, and the complaint did not allege facts showing that she was injured by them. The court rejected the suggestion that harm to Jiang, or harm to Qin resulting from what happened to her daughter, was enough. The court concluded that Qin lacked standing.

Jiang’s defamation claims

The court identified the elements of defamation as a publication that is false, defamatory, unprivileged, and likely to cause injury or special damages. It said the complaint generally did not identify the specific statements alleged to be defamatory, who made them, or when they were made.

The court also concluded that the reports were protected by the fair-report privilege. That privilege provides absolute protection for fair and true reports of official proceedings and records. The court found that the reports described matters reflected in police records, court filings, eviction proceedings, and civil-harassment proceedings. It said the reports captured the substance of those proceedings and that minor inaccuracies did not defeat the privilege. The privilege did not require KNTV to include Jiang’s account of the dispute or to present her side of the story.

The court rejected several examples offered by the plaintiffs. It found that the reports did not accuse Jiang of prostitution, did not state that she was guilty of a crime or was violent, and did not contain several other statements that the plaintiffs attributed to KNTV. The court concluded that Jiang’s defamation claims failed.

Other claims

The court said that claims arising from the same protected reports also failed. It concluded that reporting allegations from official proceedings was not extreme or outrageous conduct supporting intentional infliction of emotional distress.

The court rejected Jiang’s claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 because KNTV and the other media defendants were not state actors—private parties acting under state authority. It also rejected the related conspiracy claim because the plaintiffs could not allege a civil-rights violation. The court said there was no copyright at issue, and that the misappropriation and right-of-publicity claims were limited by the First Amendment because the reports were expressive works. It further concluded that the claims involving intellectual-property value, privacy, unjust enrichment, and unfair competition concerned the landlord’s fundraising account rather than KNTV’s conduct. The fraud claims lacked an alleged misrepresentation, and the remaining claims either were unclear, unsupported, or did not make sense as claims against KNTV.

Leave to amend and procedural steps

The court concluded that Jiang had amended her complaint multiple times and had had opportunities to correct the problems. It found that the factors governing permission to amend weighed against allowing another amendment, including the futility of amendment and the history of prior amendments.

The court expressly stated that the order was not a dispositive order and was instead a foundation for later steps. It directed that Qin’s claims be separated into a new but related case. It then planned to issue a report and recommendation that Qin’s case be dismissed for lack of standing. Finally, it stated that it would enter a separate dispositive order granting the defendants’ motion to dismiss Jiang’s claims without leave to amend and would thereafter enter judgment for the defendants. The opinion itself does not state that those later orders had already been entered.