Case Number:
BC695768
Hearing Date:
August 22, 2023
Dept:
57

Code of Civil Procedure Section 425.16 authorizes the filing of special motions to strike complaints in cases that qualify under that statute as strategic lawsuits against public participation ("anti-SLAPP motions"). Here in this case, Defendant Charles Perez filed in 2018 an anti-SLAPP motion seeking to strike the complaint of Plaintiff Southwest Law Center ("SLC"). The Court (per Judge David Sotelo) denied Perez's anti-SLAPP motion on the ground that Perez had failed to establish, at the first step of the well-established two-step process for evaluating anti-SLAPP motions, that SLC's complaint against him arises from an act in furtherance of Perez's right of petition or free speech under the federal or California constitutions in connection with a public issue -- acts that the anti-SLAPP statute treats as protected. (The Court did not address the second step of the process, which is whether there is a pro