Penrose Hill, Limited v. Mabray

Background

Penrose Hill, Limited and Philip James brought one California defamation claim against Paul Mabray. The plaintiffs alleged that Mabray’s December 11, 2017 blog post falsely portrayed them as dishonest and portrayed James as incompetent or unfit to run a wine business. They also challenged a July 2019 tweet in which Mabray linked to the blog post; the tweet’s link preview displayed the post’s title, a photograph of James, and the statement that the new subscription-economy wine companies included “some good, some fakers.”

The plaintiffs sought removal and retraction of the statements, an order preventing further publication, and at least $1 million in damages. Mabray moved for judgment on the pleadings under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(c), which tests whether the pleadings legally support the claim, and filed a special motion to strike under California’s anti-SLAPP law, which provides an early procedure for claims arising from protected speech.

Statute of Limitations

California provides a one-year limitations period for defamation claims. The court held that the blog post, published on December 11, 2017, was published more than one year before the plaintiffs filed this action on February 14, 2020. The court rejected the plaintiffs’ argument that the 2019 tweet republished the entire blog post and restarted the limitations period.

The court held that merely linking to the blog post did not republish its contents. However, the tweet’s link preview repeated the limited material displayed in the preview, so those statements were republished. The court therefore dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims based on the other statements in the blog post as untimely and limited the remaining analysis to the statements in the tweet.

Anti-SLAPP Motion

The court denied Mabray’s special motion to strike under California Code of Civil Procedure section 425.16. It found that Twitter is a public forum, but concluded that Mabray had not shown that the statements in the tweet were connected closely enough to a matter of public interest. The tweet’s general references to private-label wine, transparency, and “fakers” did not give consumers information that would help them choose among wine companies or identify specific harmful practices.

The court declined to rely on the blog post’s more detailed discussion of wine businesses because those statements were time-barred and were not republished in the tweet. The court also noted that Mabray’s factual challenges were premature because discovery had not occurred, so it considered only his legal challenges under the applicable federal procedure.

Judgment on the Pleadings

The court granted Mabray’s Rule 12(c) motion. Under California defamation law, a plaintiff must show, among other things, that the challenged statements were about the plaintiff, were false, and were made without the required level of care or, for a public figure, with actual malice. The court addressed only whether the tweet contained statements that could be understood as provable facts.

The court held that the tweet’s use of “fakers” and the phrase “some good, some fakers” did not reasonably imply an objectively verifiable fact about Penrose Hill or James. In context, the language conveyed a subjective assessment rather than a factual claim. The court therefore concluded that the tweet’s statements could not support a defamation claim.

Leave to Amend and Disposition

The court granted the plaintiffs leave to amend. Although the court considered it doubtful that amendment would cure the identified problems, it could not conclude that amendment would necessarily be futile, and it found no undue delay or prejudice.

The final order denied Mabray’s anti-SLAPP motion, granted his Rule 12(c) motion, dismissed the claims based on the non-republished blog-post statements as untimely, and directed the plaintiffs to file any amended complaint by September 1, 2020.