Dickinson v. Cosby, B271470
Decision Date | 21 November 2017 |
Docket Number | B271470 |
Citation | 17 Cal.App.5th 655,225 Cal.Rptr.3d 430 |
Court | California Court of Appeals |
Parties | Janice DICKINSON, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. William H. COSBY, Jr., Defendant and Appellant; Martin D. Singer, Defendant and Respondent. |
Liner, Angela C. Agrusa, Los Angeles; Greenberg Gross and Alan A. Greenberg, Costa Mesa, for Defendant and Appellant William H. Cosby, Jr.
The Bloom Firm, Lisa Bloom, Woodland Hills, Jivaka Candappa, Pasadena, and Alan Goldstein, Rancho Mirage, for Plaintiff and Appellant Janice Dickinson.
Horvitz & Levy, Jeremy B. Rosenand Felix Shafir, Burbank; Lavely & Singer and Andrew B. Brettler, Los Angeles, for Defendant and Respondent Martin D. Singer.
Buchalter and Harry W.R. Chamberlain II, Los Angeles, for Amicus Curiae on behalf of Association of Southern California Defense Counsel.
California Anti-SLAPP Project and Mark A. Goldowitz, Berkeley, for Amicus Curiae on behalf of California Anti-SLAPP Project.
Plaintiff Janice Dickinson went public with her accusations of rape against William H. Cosby, Jr. Cosby, in turn, through his attorney, Martin Singer, reacted with (1) a letter demanding media outlets not repeat Dickinson's allegedly false accusation, under threat of litigation ("demand letter"); and (2) a press release characterizing Dickinson's rape accusation as a lie ("press release"). Dickinson brought suit against Cosby for defamation and related causes of action. Cosby responded with a motion to strike under Code of Civil Procedure section 425.16 (the "anti-SLAPP" statute).1 When Cosby's submissions indicated that Singer might have issued the statements without first asking Cosby if the rape accusations were true, Dickinson filed a first amended complaint, adding Singer as a defendant. Cosby and Singer successfully moved to strike the first amended complaint because of the pending anti-SLAPP motion. The court then heard Cosby's anti-SLAPP motion, granting it as to the demand letter, and denying it as to the press release.
Dickinson appeals the order granting the motion to strike her first amended complaint; and the grant of the anti-SLAPP motion with respect to the demand letter. Cosby appeals the order denying his anti-SLAPP motion with respect to the press release. We conclude: (1) the court erred in striking Dickinson's first amended complaint, as it pertains only to a party, Singer, who had not filed an anti-SLAPP motion; (2) the court erred in granting the anti-SLAPP motion with respect to the demand letter; and (3) the court correctly denied the anti-SLAPP motion with respect to the press release. Accordingly, we affirm in part and reverse in part.
According to Dickinson, Cosby drugged and raped her in 1982. Dickinson was a successful model; Cosby was a famous comedian and television actor. They met for dinner, and Dickinson complained to Cosby of menstrual cramps. Cosby offered her a pill that he said would help; the pill was actually a narcotic which heavily sedated her. Later that night, he sexually assaulted her, committing vaginal and anal rape. Dickinson did not report the crime, due to fear of retaliation by Cosby, "a wealthy, powerful celebrity." The evidence would show, however, that she did tell some close friends.
In 2002, Dickinson's autobiography, No Lifeguard on Duty , was published by Regan Books, an imprint of HarperCollins. Dickinson's evidence in opposition to the anti-SLAPP motion shows the following: Dickinson disclosed the rape to her ghostwriter, Pablo Fenjves, and wanted it included in the book. The president of Regan Books, Judith Regan, discussed the matter with the legal department at HarperCollins, which said the rape could not be included without corroboration. Regan thought corroboration would be difficult, but believed Dickinson to be credible and argued to include the rape. As the HarperCollins legal department refused to publish the rape allegations, Fenjves wrote a "sanitized version of the encounter," in which Dickinson "rebuffed Cosby's sexual advances and retreated to her room." The book stated that when Dickinson turned Cosby down, "he gave [her] the dirtiest, meanest look in the world, stepped into his suite, and slammed the door in [her] face." According to Regan, Cosby was "mentioned in the book to satisfy Ms. Dickinson in some way; however the story was modified to deal with the issue without any legal problems."
In September 2002, shortly after publication of the book, the New York Observer published an interview with Dickinson. The article begins with the interviewer discussing highlights from the book, including that Dickinson believed Cosby when he told her that she had a good singing voice, "that is, until she didn't want to go to bed with him and he blew her off." The interviewer later asked Dickinson about the Cosby encounter from her book, to which Dickinson is quoted as responding, " ‘Oh, he's so sad.’ " Dickinson did not mention rape in the published portion of the interview.
By late 2014—12 years after Dickinson's book had been published—other women had publicly accused Cosby of drugging and raping them. On November 18, 2014, in a television interview with Entertainment Tonight , Dickinson disclosed that Cosby had raped her. By this time, Dickinson had become a successful reality television personality. Her accusation garnered substantial media attention.
Cosby would subsequently make much of the point that, in addition to accusing him of rape, Dickinson may have also accused him of killing the rape story in her autobiography. A story on ETOnline states that Dickinson wanted to write about the rape, "but claims that when she submitted a draft with her full story to HarperCollins, Cosby and his lawyers pressured her and her publisher to remove the details." While it is true that the ETOnline story states this, it is not completely clear whether Dickinson had actually made that statement to Entertainment Tonight —or instead, ETOnline may have misconstrued Dickinson's explanation as to why the rape was omitted from her autobiography. A transcript of Dickinson's actual interview with Entertainment Tonight makes no mention of Cosby or his lawyers pressuring HarperCollins.
After the Entertainment Tonight interview went public, several media outlets contacted the Cosby camp, indicating an intention to run follow-up stories and seeking Cosby's comment. In response, that same day, Singer, on behalf of Cosby, sent a demand letter to the executive producer of Good Morning America , with similar letters to other media outlets. The demand letter was over two pages long, on letterhead from Singer's law firm, and began with the warnings: "CONFIDENTIAL LEGAL NOTICE" and "PUBLICATION OR DISSEMINATION IS PROHIBITED."
The body of the letter started with,
The next paragraph explained that Cosby and his team had no contact with HarperCollins about any story planned for the book. It stated,
The letter continued, again repeating that both the rape allegation and interference with HarperCollins were false—and asserting that HarperCollins could confirm this. It threatened, "If you proceed with the planned segment with Janice Dickinson and if you disseminate her Story when you can check the facts with independent sources at HarperCollins who will provide you with facts demonstrating that the Story is false and fabricated, you will be acting recklessly and with Constitutional malice." Singer stated, "It would be extraordinarily reckless to disseminate this highly defamatory Story when Ms. Dickinson herself told an entirely different story in her book," confirmed the same story in the New York Observer interview, and "when you may independently confirm with her publisher the falsity of her new assertion that my client's lawyers supposedly pressured HarperCollins to delete the alleged rape story from her book, and when her new allegation of rape was made for the first time only now when it appears that she [is] seeking publicity to bolster her fading career."
The letter repeated, "Since at a minimum Ms. Dickinson fabricated the assertion that my client's lawyers pressured the publisher more than a decade ago to take out the sexual assault story—a story we heard now for the first time—it would be reckless to rely on Ms. Dickinson in this matter."
Singer's letter explicitly threatened litigation: ...
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