Adamson v. Grove

• Decision Date: 30 November 2022
• Docket Number: M2020-01651-COA-R3-CV
• Parties: TREVOR ADAMSON v. SARAH E. GROVE, ET AL.
• Court: Tennessee Court of Appeals

TREVOR ADAMSON
v.
SARAH E. GROVE, ET AL.

No. M2020-01651-COA-R3-CV

Court of Appeals of Tennessee

November 30, 2022

Session May 17, 2022

Appeal from the Circuit Court for Sumner County No. 83CC1-2020-CV-906, 83CC1-2020-CV-616, 83CC1-2020-CV-818 Joe Thompson, Judge

In this case, the plaintiff filed a complaint alleging defamation and related causes of action. Before the defendants filed an answer or any other pleading, the plaintiff filed a notice of voluntary dismissal, and the trial court entered an order of voluntary dismissal without prejudice. Within thirty days, the defendants filed a combined motion to alter or amend and petition to dismiss the complaint with prejudice pursuant to the Tennessee Public Participation Act (TPPA), Tenn. Code Ann. § 20-17-101, et seq., seeking an award of attorney fees and sanctions. The trial court ultimately entered an order altering or amending the order of voluntary dismissal without prejudice, granting the defendants' petition to dismiss with prejudice under the TPPA, and ordering the plaintiff to pay $15,000 in attorney fees in addition to $24,000 in sanctions. The plaintiff has appealed and raised numerous issues, including a challenge to the trial court's subject matter jurisdiction after the nonsuit. For the following reasons, we reverse the trial court's order granting the motion to alter or amend, vacate the trial court's order granting the appellees' petition to dismiss with prejudice and awarding attorney fees and sanctions, and remand.

Tenn. R. Civ. P. 3 Appeal as of Right; Judgment of the Circuit Court Reversed in Part, Vacated in Part, and Remanded

Kent T. Jones, Cleveland, Tennessee, for the appellant, Trevor Adamson.

Daniel A. Horwitz, Nashville, Tennessee, for the appellees, Karl S. Bolton, Sarah E. Grove, and Deborah Ann Sangetti.

Jonathan T. Skrmetti, Attorney General and Reporter, Andree Blumstein, Solicitor

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General, and Janet M. Kleinfelter, Deputy Attorney General, for the appellee, State of Tennessee.

CARMA DENNIS MCGEE, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which J. STEVEN STAFFORD, P.J., W.S., and ARNOLD B. GOLDIN, J., joined.

OPINION

I. FACTS & PROCEDURAL HISTORY

On July 9, 2020, Plaintiff Trevor Adamson filed this lawsuit against Defendants Sarah E. Grove, Deborah Ann Sangetti, and Karl S. Bolton. According to the complaint, the suit arose out of allegedly defamatory Facebook posts and slanderous utterances made by Defendants concerning Plaintiff. The complaint asserted several causes of action, including defamation, invasion of privacy, intentional interference with business relations, and other related claims. It sought $800,000 in compensatory and punitive damages, in addition to injunctive relief and attorney fees. Plaintiff filed an amended complaint on August 12. On August 13, Plaintiff's counsel moved to withdraw. On August 20, Plaintiff filed a notice of voluntary dismissal without prejudice pursuant to Tennessee Rule of Civil Procedure 41.01. At that time, Defendants had not filed an answer or other pleading of any sort. On August 24, the trial court entered an order dismissing the case without prejudice pursuant to Rule 41.01.

On September 11, Defendants filed a combined motion to alter or amend and petition to dismiss with prejudice pursuant to the Tennessee Public Participation Act, Tenn. Code Ann. § 20-17-101, et seq., seeking an award of attorney fees and sanctions. Defendants characterized Plaintiff's lawsuit as a "SLAPP-suit" that was filed by a political candidate in order to silence community activists who criticized him online. Thus, a brief description of SLAPP suits is helpful at the outset.

This Court provided the following general overview of SLAPP suits and anti-SLAPP legislation in Nandigam Neurology, PLC v. Beavers, 639 S.W.3d 651, 657-59 (Tenn. Ct. App. 2021):

The term "SLAPP" stands for "strategic lawsuits against public participation," meaning lawsuits which might be viewed as "discouraging the exercise of constitutional rights, often intended to silence speech in opposition to monied interests rather than to vindicate a plaintiff's right." [Todd Hambidge, et al Speak Up. Tennessee's New Anti-SLAPP Statute Provides Extra Protections to Constitutional Rights, 55 Tenn B.J. 14, 15 (Sept. 2019)]; see also Sandholm v Kuecker, 356 Ill.Dec. 733, 962 N.E.2d 418, 427 (Ill. 2012) ("'SLAPPs . . . are lawsuits aimed at preventing citizens from exercising their political rights or punishing those who have done so.'" (quoting Wright Dev. Group, LLC v. Walsh, 238 Ill.2d 620, 345 Ill.Dec. 546, 939 N.E.2d 389, 395 (2010))). Regarding SLAPP lawsuits generally, the

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Illinois Supreme Court has aptly explained:

SLAPPs use the threat of money damages or the prospect of the cost of defending against the suits to silence citizen participation. The paradigm SLAPP suit is "one filed by developers, unhappy with public protest over a proposed development, filed against leading critics in order to silence criticism of the proposed development." Westfield Partners, Ltd. v. Hogan, 740 F.Supp. 523, 525 (N.D. Ill. 1990). A SLAPP is "based upon nothing more than defendants' exercise of their right, under the first amendment, to petition the government for a redress of grievances." Hogan, 740 F.Supp. at 525. SLAPPs are, by definition, meritless. John C. Barker, Common-Law and Statutory Solutions to the Problem of SLAPPs, 26 Loy. L.A. L. Rev. 395, 396 (1993). Plaintiffs in SLAPP suits do not intend to win but rather to chill a defendant's speech or protest activity and discourage opposition by others through delay, expense, and distraction. Id. at 403-05. "In fact, defendants win eighty to ninety percent of all SLAPP suits litigated on the merits." Id. at 406. While the case is being litigated in the courts, however, defendants are forced to expend funds on litigation costs and attorney fees and may be discouraged from continuing their protest activities. Id. at 404-06. "The idea is that the SLAPP plaintiff's goals are achieved through the ancillary effects of the lawsuit itself on the defendant, not through an adjudication on the merits. Therefore, the plaintiff's choice of what cause of action to plead matters little." Mark J. Sobczak, Comment, SLAPPed in Illinois: The Scope and Applicability of the Illinois Citizen Participation Act, 28 N. Ill. U.L. Rev. 559, 561 (2008). SLAPPs "masquerade as ordinary lawsuits" and may include myriad causes of action, including defamation, interference with contractual rights or prospective economic advantage, and malicious prosecution. Kathryn W. Tate, California's Anti-SLAPP Legislation: A Summary of and Commentary on Its Operation and Scope, 33 Loy. L.A. L. Rev. 801, 804-05 (2000). Because winning is not a SLAPP plaintiff's primary motivation, the existing safeguards to prevent meritless claims from prevailing were seen as inadequate, prompting many states to enact anti-SLAPP legislation. Id. at 805. These statutory schemes commonly provide for expedited judicial review, summary dismissal, and recovery of attorney fees for the party who has been "SLAPPed." Id.

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Sandholm, 356 Ill.Dec. 733, 962 N.E.2d at 427-28 (some internal citations omitted); see also Steidley v. Cmty. Newspaper Holdings, Inc., 383 P.3d 780, 786 (Okla.Civ.App. 2016) (citations omitted) ("SLAPP suits are designed to intimidate the petitioners into dropping their initial petitions due to the expense and fear of extended litigation. Libel is a common cause of action in SLAPP suits.").

Anti-SLAPP statutes have arisen in response to SLAPP lawsuits. See Hambidge, supra, at 15 ("[A]nti-SLAPP statutes are not a recent development[;] [s]tates began enacting anti-SLAPP statutes in the 1980s in response to an increasing number of lawsuits that were filed for the purpose of discouraging the exercise of constitutional rights."); see also Liberty Synergistics Inc. v. Microflo Ltd., 718 F.3d 138, 147 (2nd Cir. 2013) ("[T]he point of the anti-SLAPP statute is that you have a right not to be dragged through the courts because you exercised your constitutional rights."). Over thirty states now have anti-SLAPP statutes in place, and while the particular language varies, the stated purpose of anti-SLAPP legislation is consistent. See, e.g., Ga. Code Ann. § 9-11-11.1(a) ("[I]t is in the public interest to encourage participation by the citizens of Georgia in matters of public significance and public interest through the exercise of their constitutional rights of petition and freedom of speech . . . [T]he valid exercise of the constitutional rights of petition and freedom of speech should not be chilled through abuse of the judicial process."); Ark. Code Ann. § 16-63-501 ("[I]t is in the public interest to encourage participation by the citizens of the State of Arkansas in matters of public significance through the exercise of their constitutional rights of freedom of speech . . . Strategic lawsuits against political participation can effectively punish concerned citizens for exercising the constitutional right to speak and petition the government for a redress of grievances."); Colo. Rev. Stat. § 13-20-1101 ("[I]t is in the public interest to encourage continued participation in matters of public significance and [ ] this participation should not be chilled through abuse of the judicial process.").

Id. at 657-59.

Tennessee's Anti-SLAPP law, the Tennessee Public Participation Act, Tenn. Code Ann. § 20-17-101, et seq., "is a relatively new creature of the legislature, having only been codified in 2019." Doe v. Roe, 638 S.W.3d 614, 617 (Tenn. Ct. App. 2021). However, this Court has noted that "the statute is, on its face, consistent with the anti-SLAPP legislation of many other states." Nandigam, 639 S.W.3d at 660. The TPPA provides:

The purpose of this chapter is to

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