Opinion
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED
APPEAL from an order of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County No. MC020603. Randolph A. Rogers, Judge.
Collins Collins Muir & Stewart, Tomas A. Guterres, Chad Chen, Douglas Fee and Eric Brown, for Defendants and Appellants.
Law Offices of Olaf Landsgaard and Olaf Arthur Landsgaard, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
RUBIN, ACTING P. J.
Defendants County of Los Angeles, Lee Baca, Robert Alloway, Jeff Scott, and John Geringer appeal from the trial court’s denial of their special motion to strike plaintiff Walter Dale Ligman’s complaint as a “Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation.” We affirm.
FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS
Plaintiff Walter Dale Ligman owns 10 acres of land near Lancaster. He alleges a group of about 10 to 12 Los Angeles county law enforcement agents, several of them armed, entered his property without a search warrant or his permission in July 2008. Ligman alleges the agents went into his home, “rummaged through his belongings, dumped the drawers of his desk, opened a flashlight and broke it down into pieces. [¶] Defendants, without probable cause or a search warrant, opened a shotgun and broke it down into pieces.” Ligman also alleges that one agent took a shotgun given to Ligman by his father and “tore it down, and gave it back to... Ligman with pieces missing – it has not been operable since. This same defendant took... Ligman’s [medical] marijuana bottle..., opened it, and spilled the contents onto the ground.” An agent also threatened to shoot Ligman’s dog. Following the search, appellants cited Ligman for animal control and building and safety violations.
In July 2009, Ligman filed a complaint against appellants alleging they had trespassed on his property. After several rounds of demurrers by appellants, which the court sustained with leave to amend, and several special motions by appellants to strike the complaint as a “SLAPP” (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation), which the trial court deemed moot when it sustained each demurrer, Ligman filed his third amended complaint, which is the operative complaint here. His third amended complaint alleges causes of action for federal civil rights violations (42 U.S.C. § 1983), conspiracy to deprive him of civil rights, inverse condemnation, and injunctive relief.
The court initially sustained the demurrer to Ligman’s second amended complaint without leave to amend, but later granted Ligman’s motion for reconsideration and gave him leave to file his third amended complaint.
Appellants filed a special motion under the anti-SLAPP statute (Code Civ. Proc., § 425.16) to strike the third amended complaint as a SLAPP. The anti-SLAPP statute permits expedited trial court review of a complaint before a lawsuit gets fully underway, and, when appropriate, dismissal of a complaint targeting the defendant’s exercise of freedom of speech or petition. (Nguyen-Lam v. Cao (2009) 171 Cal.App.4th 858, 872; City of Santa Monica v. Stewart (2005) 126 Cal.App.4th 43, 80.) Appellants asserted the complaint sought damages from them for the citations they issued to Ligman for animal control and building and safety violations on his property. Appellants argued to the court that, therefore, “Plaintiff’s Third Amended Complaint must be stricken in its entirety as it is clearly a suit for actions protected by [the anti-SLAPP statute] Code of Civil Procedure section 425.16. The allegations in the [Third Amended Complaint] related to the issuance of citations by the District Attorney’s Office and for the later prosecution of those violations. These actions are undisputedly protected under Section 425.16....”
The court denied appellants’ motion to strike. During oral argument on the motion, the court noted Ligman’s complaint alleged appellants conducted “a toss search of the premises. You know, went into all drawers and so thoroughly that everything is dumped all over the place as they sometimes do in drug searches for example.... Assuming that’s true, I don’t have any reason to believe that that was a legitimate search.” In its written order denying the motion, the court explained that appellants failed to support their assertion that Ligman’s complaint was a SLAPP:
“The gravamen or basic thrust of [Ligman’s] causes of action is that Defendants violated his civil rights not by issuing him citations, but by searching his home without probable cause or a warrant and destroying his personal property. Defendants have made no attempt to argue how such actions might constitute ‘conduct in furtherance of the exercise of the constitutional right of petition or the constitutional right of free speech in connection with a public issue or an issue of public interest’ under [the anti-SLAPP statute] Code of Civil Procedure § 425.16”
Appellants appeal from the court’s denial of their motion. (Code of Civ. Proc., § 425.16, subd. (i).)
STANDARD OF REVIEW
A defendant who specially moves to strike a complaint as a SLAPP must show that the primary thrust or gravamen of the complaint arises from the defendant’s exercise of his constitutionally protected exercise of free speech or right to petition in connection with a public issue. (Code of Civ. Proc., § 425.16, subd. (b)(1); Dible v. Haight Ashbury Free Clinics (2009) 170 Cal.App.4th 843, 848.) If the purportedly actionable conduct does not arise from the exercise of those constitutionally protected rights, the court must deny the motion to strike. (Equilon Enterprises v. Consumer Cause, Inc. (2002) 29 Cal.4th 53, 67) We independently review the trial court’s ruling on a motion to strike. (Soukup v. Law Offices of Herbert Hafif (2006) 39 Cal.4th 260, 269, fn. 3.)
DISCUSSION
Appellants contend the court erroneously denied their special motion to strike appellant’s third amended complaint as a SLAPP. Their contention misreads Ligman’s complaint and misreads the law.
The principal thrust or gravamen of the claim determines whether a complaint with allegations involving constitutionally protected and unprotected activity is subject to a special motion to strike as a SLAPP. (Mann v. Quality Old Time Service, Inc. (2004) 120 Cal.App.4th 90, 103; Fox Searchlight Pictures Inc. v. Paladino (2001) 89 Cal.App.4th 294, 308.) Here, appellants misread the complaint. Appellants assert Ligman was “suing for [the] County’s ongoing investigation of his failure to comply with building codes, and his subsequent prosecution for those violations. In other words, he was suing over protected activity, making his lawsuit subject to dismissal by an anti-SLAPP motion.” Not so. He was suing, as the trial court correctly noted, over appellants’ allegedly unlawful and damaging search of his property: entry without a warrant, “breaking down” of a flashlight and shotguns rendering at least one of them inoperable, spilling medical marijuana onto the ground, and threatening to shoot his dog.
But even if Ligman were suing over a lawful search and issuance of citations, instead of, in the trial court’s words, a “toss search, ” appellants cite no authority that their investigation of building and animal control violations is the type of constitutionally protected conduct that the anti-SLAPP statute covers. In this respect, appellants misread the law. Appellants assert “On an anti-SLAPP motion, County only had to show that the lawsuit arises out of County’s exercise of its constitutional authority.” In the same vein, appellants elsewhere assert “this lawsuit arose from protected activity, i.e., the government’s right to investigate alleged illegal activity.” Not so. The anti-SLAPP statute protects a defendant’s “right of petition or free speech, ” including “conduct in furtherance of the exercise of” those rights. (Code of Civ. Proc., § 425.16, subds. (b)(1) & (e).) The statute does not protect a defendant’s exercise of any and all rights. Appellants’ confusion about the scope of the anti-SLAPP statute is evident from their citation to Bradbury v. Superior Court (1996) 49 Cal.App.4th 1108. That decision held that a prosecutor’s comments to the media about the prosecutor’s investigation of a suspected crime constituted the exercise of free speech, and a citizen’s request that law enforcement investigate a suspected criminal matter involved the exercise of the right to petition. (Id. at pp. 1112, 1117.) Bradbury does not, as appellants contend, stand for the proposition that the government’s investigation of alleged illegal activity is the exercise of free speech or the right to petition.
Because this appeal is from an order denying a special motion to strike under the anti-SLAPP statute, we confine our analysis to that statute.
Appellants contend the trial court shirked its duty to rule on their special motions to strike by finding the motions were moot each time the court sustained appellants’ demurrers. Appellants suggest that the court’s granting Ligman leave to amend after each demurrer opened the door to Ligman pleading his way around their motions to strike, which wrongfully denied them the speedy end to a SLAPP that the anti-SLAPP statute promises. But whether or not the trial court erred in not ruling more expeditiously on appellants’ motion to strike, appellants cannot show prejudice if those motions had not been well-taken. Nowhere in the record do appellants show a point at which a motion to strike would have been successful, for nowhere can they show that Ligman was suing them for their exercise of their rights of speech or petition. To the contrary, and tellingly, appellants note in passing that “it cannot be disputed that the gravamen of the original complaint is a trespass, ” and it has remained forever so throughout its multiple amendments.
DISPOSITION
The order denying appellant’s special motion to strike is affirmed. Respondent to recover his costs on appeal.
WE CONCUR: FLIER, J., GRIMES, J.