Attorney General Backs Tenants Against Anti-SLAPP Chicanery

by Beyond Chron (reposted)

Sat, Oct 14, 2006 10:43AM

In a legal case with significant implications for San Francisco tenants, Attorney General has filed an amicus brief in favor of tenants fighting Ellis Act evictions at Lincoln Place in Los Angeles. The brief addresses a major issue that has been proceeding under the radar screen in San Francisco: landlords attempting to use the state Anti-SLAPP statute to deny tenants the right to contest Ellis Act evictions. The law against “strategic lawsuits against public participation” was designed to prevent developers and corporate interests from suing people who opposed them in public hearings or meetings. Now landlords are using the law to protect themselves from liability for filing questionable eviction notices, and to deny tenants their legal rights.

The Attorney General’s intervention in the Lincoln Place case is a critical development for all of those concerned about the judiciary’s misapplication of Anti-SLAPP laws. The trial court ruling that the filing of an eviction notice is a “right of petition or free speech under the Constitution in connection with a public issue---the language of the Anti-SLAPP law codified in Code of Civil Procedure 425.16---seriously undermines eviction protections for tenants granted under local and state laws.

The tenants at Lincoln Place have likely been subjected to the most outrageous legal rulings of any litigants in California over the past two decades. The entire problem began when the Court of Appeal ruled that the Ellis Act preempted local anti-demolition laws, despite the Ellis Act’s express language that “local land use laws” were not preempted.

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