Nuisance includes any conduct that endangers, or may endanger, life or health, gives offense to the senses, violates the laws of decency, or obstructs, or may obstruct, the use and enjoyment of property.
Sound familiar?
Nuisance is a common cause of action (claim) in SLAPPs. Although not all nuisance claims arise from First Amendment activity, and not all that do are subject to the anti-SLAPP law, if you’ve been sued for nuisance, you may well have been SLAPPed.
The case below is an example of nuisance SLAPP decided by the California Court of Appeal.
Fashion 21 v. Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles
(2004, 2d District – 117 Cal.App.4th 1138, 12 Cal.Rptr.3d 493)
A seller of women’s apparel filed an action for nuisance against the Coalition, a nonprofit organization, and others, alleging that defendants handed out defamatory flyers in front of its store which falsely claimed it had withheld “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in wages due to its workers, and that handing out these flyers constituted a nuisance. The appellate court ruled that the Forever 21 had failed to show these flyers contained false defamatory statements, and further ruled that even if it had, Forever 21 had failed to show how distribution of such flyers caused it to suffer substantial actual damage to the use and enjoyment of its property, as required for a nuisance claim. The court therefore ruled that the Coalition’s anti-SLAPP motion should have been granted.
The information on this website is not, nor is it intended to be, legal advice. The information here is meant to provide general information to the public.