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Court of Appeal:
No Public Interest in Suing Board for Relief Against Agency
Opinion Says Exemption to Anti-SLAPP Statute Does Not Apply Where No Reason to Sue Directors for Relief Only Organization Can Provide
By a MetNews Staff Writer
Div. Two of the Fourth District Court of Appeal has held that the public interest exception to anti-SLAPP legislation does not apply to claims against a water district’s board members and manager—relating to alleged conflicts of interest in setting diverging rates for different locations—as there is no value advanced when individual corporate actors are sued for relief, such as the return of revenue, that can only be provided by the agency.
The dispute arose in an appeal from one of several cases between Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and the Coachella Valley Water District over taxes imposed by the agency to fund the replenishment of groundwater in a local aquifer that sources water for the desert community.
In the present action, the association seeks to direct the water board and several of its board members to stop collecting the allegedly unlawful charges, to return the illegally raised revenue, and to vacate all accompanying resolutions. The action was initially filed by Randall Roberts but Howard Jarvis substituted in as lead plaintiff.
Anti-SLAPP Motion
All individual defendants filed an anti-SLAPP motion under Code of Civil Procedure §425.16, seeking to strike the writ of mandate and conversion cause of action against them on the grounds that the claims arose from their protected activity of voting to set the charges and the general manager’s discussion of the cost-of-service study with the board.
The plaintiff asserts that a public interest exception, found at §425.17, applies.
Sec. 425.17 provides that “Section 425.16 does not apply to any action brought solely in the public interest or on behalf of the general public” if the plaintiff “does not seek any relief…different from the relief sought for the general public,” the action would “enforce an important” public right, and “[p]rivate enforcement is necessary and places a disproportionate financial burden on the plaintiff.”
Then-Riverside Superior Court Judge Sunshine Sykes (now a District Court judge for the Central District of California) agreed with the plaintiff and denied the anti-SLAPP motion. Sykes also awarded $177,774.30 in attorney fees and $2,992.20 in costs to the plaintiff related to litigating the anti-SLAPP motion, agreeing with the association that the anti-SLAPP motion was frivolous.
Justice Michael J. Raphael authored the opinion, filed Friday, reversing the denial of the anti-SLAPP motion and the order awarding attorney fees and costs. Presiding Justice Manuel A. Ramirez and Justice Art W. McKinster joined in the opinion.
District Performance
Turning to the writ of mandate and conversion claims, Raphael said:
“The plaintiff seeks a writ of mandate to direct the defendants to stop collecting unlawful replenishment charges, vacate all resolutions unlawfully imposing replenishment charges, and return all amounts collected as unlawful replenishment charges. The conversion cause of action seeks a return of the same amounts. But all these are acts only the Water District can perform, not any individual board members or its general manager.”
He continued:
“The first amended petition and complaint seeks to stop collection of unlawful replenishment charges, but replenishment charge payments are made to the Water District, not to the general manager….It asks for the resolutions about the replenishment charges to be vacated, but only the Water District’s board can do that, not individual board members….And it prays for a return of the money paid as replenishment charges, but that money is in the Water District’s bank accounts, not the general manager’s.”
Under these circumstances, the jurist opined:
“The inclusion of the board members and the general manager as defendants in these causes of action is gratuitous. Its only effect is to expose those individuals to the potential costs of having to provide for their own defense as well as the threat of personal liability….That risk, even if small, is enough to have a chilling effect.”
Raphael concluded that “[t]he public interest exemption does not apply here, as the public interest is not advanced when individual members of an official government body are sued for relief only the government body can provide.”
Public Interest Asserted
Looking to the purported public interest asserted by the plaintiff, the justice said:
“Howard Jarvis states the lawsuit ‘seeks to rectify critical issues concerning governmental abuses of power, conflicts of interest, public fraud, manipulation of water rates, constitutional violations, and environmental concerns about large agricultural companies depleting the Coachella Valley’s supply of potable drinking water.’ There is no serious dispute that other causes of action alleged in the first amended petition and complaint seek to promote the public interest on these issues.”
Continuing, he wrote:
“But claims asserted against individual defendants for actions only the government body undertook do not advance the public interest. If we ignored the lack of public benefit in suing the individual defendants on the writ of mandate cause of action, we would be applying a ‘principal thrust or gravamen’ test to determine whether the exemption applies, an approach our Supreme Court has rejected.”
Rejecting the assertion by Howard Jarvis that the motion should be considered by the trial court on remand, he said that “[i]n the four years since the anti-SLAPP motion was first filed, the case has progressed to trial and appellate review, so the case is nowhere near the early stage of litigation that anti-SLAPP motions were designed for.”
Considering the merits of the anti-SLAPP motion, he said that “[t]he anti-SLAPP motion adequately identifies two protected activities that gave rise to alleged liability” and “Howard Jarvis has not shown a probability of success on any of the implicated causes of action.”
The case is Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association v. Powell, 2024 S.O.S. 3516.
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