NSS Labs, Inc. v. CrowdStrike, Inc.
- Beth Freeman
- 5:18-cv-05711
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 4
NSS Labs v. CrowdStrike: Judge Freeman denied AMTSO’s fee request because its conditional motion was never activated.
AMTSO was denied its request for attorney’s fees; the opinion also explains that NSS Labs’s voluntary dismissal occurred before the court decided the pending dismissal and anti-SLAPP motions.
What happened
NSS Labs, Inc. v. CrowdStrike, Inc. was an antitrust lawsuit that NSS Labs voluntarily dismissed before the court ruled on pending motions.
AMTSO asked for attorney’s fees under California’s anti-SLAPP law, which allows early challenges to lawsuits targeting protected expression. AMTSO’s separate motion to strike was expressly conditioned on the court denying the defendants’ motion to dismiss, but NSS Labs dismissed its claims first.
Judge Beth Labson Freeman denied AMTSO’s fee motion because the stated condition never occurred, so AMTSO would not have been the prevailing party for fee purposes.
The detailed version
- NSS Labs, Inc. v. CrowdStrike, Inc. · No. 5:18-cv-05711
- Beth Freeman
- Apr. 21, 2020
Background
NSS Labs brought an antitrust lawsuit against several named and unidentified defendants. The court dismissed the original complaint under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), which allows dismissal when a complaint does not adequately state a legal claim, but allowed NSS Labs to amend. NSS Labs filed an amended complaint.
The defendants then jointly moved to dismiss the amended complaint. AMTSO also filed a separate motion to strike under California’s anti-SLAPP statute. That motion was expressly contingent on the court denying the defendants’ motion to dismiss. Before either motion was fully briefed or decided, NSS Labs voluntarily dismissed all its claims without prejudice, and the court administratively closed the case.
AMTSO’s Fee Request
AMTSO later asked the court to award attorney’s fees under the anti-SLAPP statute and to grant its previously filed contingent motion to strike. The statute generally provides fees to a defendant who prevails on a special motion to strike. The court explained that a plaintiff’s voluntary dismissal does not necessarily prevent a defendant from seeking fees, because the court may examine the pending motion to determine whether the defendant would have been the prevailing party.
Court’s Ruling
The court held that AMTSO’s fee motion had to be denied. AMTSO’s formal notice of motion and requested relief made the motion to strike conditional on the court denying the defendants’ motion to dismiss. The court never denied that motion, and NSS Labs’s voluntary dismissal made that event impossible.
AMTSO argued that the condition instead was that the court not dismiss the claims against AMTSO. The court rejected that interpretation, finding that the wording of the formal motion controlled and that the motion to strike was contingent on the claims moving forward. Because the claims did not move forward, the contingent motion to strike was never triggered. The court therefore held that AMTSO would not have been the prevailing party, regardless of the motion’s merits, and DENIED the motion for attorney’s fees.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.