CoreCivic Inc v. Candide Group LLC

Background

CoreCivic, Inc. brought this diversity action against Candide Group, LLC and Morgan Simon, alleging defamation and defamation by implication. The claims concerned statements in Simon’s online Forbes articles about private prisons, including statements connecting CoreCivic to immigrant detention and statements that CoreCivic had spent $25 million lobbying over three decades to promote harsher criminal justice and immigration laws.

Defendants filed a special motion to strike under California’s anti-SLAPP statute. An earlier district-court order held that the statute applied in federal court and dismissed the claims concerning immigrant detention without leave to amend. The court of appeals affirmed that part of the decision and remanded for consideration of the unresolved claims concerning the lobbying statements. The parties had already briefed and argued those remaining issues, so the court resolved them without another hearing.

Motion to Strike

California’s anti-SLAPP statute protects certain speech and petitioning activities concerning public issues unless the plaintiff shows a reasonable probability of prevailing. The court had previously determined that the defamation claims arose from protected activity. It held that the same reasoning applied to the lobbying statements because Simon was contributing to public debate about immigration policy and the effects of private prisons.

The court also held that an exemption from the anti-SLAPP statute did not apply because the action was based on the creation of articles published in a newspaper or magazine of general circulation. The lobbying-related defamation claims therefore remained subject to the anti-SLAPP statute.

At the second step of the analysis, the court applied the standard used to decide whether a complaint adequately states a claim. It explained that defamation requires a published, false, defamatory, unprivileged statement that naturally tends to injure the plaintiff or causes special damage, and that the statement must specifically concern the plaintiff.

The court identified whether the statements expressed opinions or verifiable facts as the threshold issue. It examined the statements’ overall context, their specific wording and setting, and whether they were capable of being proven true or false. The court concluded that Simon’s lobbying statements were protected opinions. The articles’ overall tone was critical and subjective, Forbes was a forum where readers would expect analysis and opinion, and Simon described the lobbying theory as something that had been “speculated and critiqued.”

The court also found that the assertion that CoreCivic promoted “harsher” criminal justice and immigration laws was not capable of objective verification in the circumstances presented. Although whether a particular law is harsher may sometimes be straightforward, broader changes in the law could produce different reasonable analyses. Because the totality of the circumstances showed that the statements were opinions, CoreCivic failed to show a reasonable probability of succeeding on its claims.

The court therefore GRANTED defendants’ motion to strike.

Attorney’s Fees and Costs

The court stated that defendants were entitled to attorney’s fees because they prevailed on the motion to strike. It rejected the use of defense counsel’s standard hourly rates because counsel had actually charged defendants’ insurance companies discounted rates. The court used the rates actually charged instead.

The court also found the requested 407.9 hours excessive, redundant, and inadequately supported. It determined that 90 hours was reasonable for the motion, reply, and hearing preparation; 30 hours was reasonable for the fee motion, reply, and negotiations; and 15 hours was reasonable for responding to CoreCivic’s administrative motion. In total, the court found 135 hours reasonable.

Using an approximate weighted hourly rate of $338, the court calculated attorney’s fees of $45,630.00. It found that the $310 filing cost for a special admission application was not recoverable because defendants had not identified a supporting rule or statute.

Disposition

In CoreCivic, Inc. v. Candide Group, LLC and Morgan Simon, Judge William Alsup GRANTED defendants’ motion to strike and GRANTED, to the extent stated, defendants’ motion for attorney’s fees. Defendants were awarded $45,630.00 in attorney’s fees and were not awarded their costs.