Murray v. Tran (Sept. 24, 2020, D076104) __Cal.App.5th __ [2020 WL 5668741]
Dr. Ian Murray and Dr. My Tran co-owned a dental practice. During a financial dispute, Dr. Tran accused Dr. Murray of “substandard dental work.” He repeated that claim to his attorney, their employees, a retired dentist who knew Dr. Murray, and Dr. Murray’s new employer. Dr. Murray sued Dr. Tran, alleging multiple defamation claims. The trial court dismissed those claims under the anti-SLAPP statute. Dr. Murray appealed.
The Court of Appeal reversed in part and affirmed in part. The court concluded Dr. Murray had alleged five separate defamation claims, but only one—arising from the statements to Dr. Murray’s new employer—involved speech protected by the anti-SLAPP statute.
The anti-SLAPP statute can apply “when the statements concern public interest but were not made in a public forum,” as was the case here. Under the two-part test from FilmOn.com v. DoubleVerify, Inc. (2019) 7 Cal.5th 133, 149-150, a court first considers “ ‘ what “public issue or [ ] issue of public interest” the speech in question implicates,’ ” and second, “ ‘what functional relationship exists between the speech and the public conversation about some matter of public interest.’ ”
The Court of Appeal held that all statements Dr. Tran made about the quality of Dr. Murray’s care were matters of vital public interest (step one). However (at step two), Dr. Tran’s private statements to employees and other acquaintances lacked the requisite “functional relationship” with the public conversation, while Dr. Tran’s statement to Dr. Murray’s new employer possessed that relationship—it was “directly tethered to the issue of public interest (a dentist’s competence to perform dental work) and promoted the public conversation on that issue because they were made to a person who had direct connection to and authority over [the accused doctor’s] patient population.” At that point, the burden shifted to Dr. Murray to prove a probability of prevailing. He could not do so because he had failed to present evidence that Dr. Tran actually made a statement to Dr. Murray’s new employer. Accordingly, the trial court had properly dismissed Dr. Murray’s defamation claim based on that allegation.
