Haight Ashbury Free Clinics, Inc. v. Happening House Ventures

In Haight Ashbury Free Clinics, Inc. v. Happening House Ventures (2010) 184 Cal.App.4th 1539, the plaintiff nonprofit corporation alleged that its founder breached fiduciary duties by committing numerous acts, two of which were the subject of the motion to strike: (1) conspiring to give false testimony in depositions in ongoing litigation concerning the corporation's interest in a partnership, and (2) misrepresenting facts surrounding the litigation to a local newspaper. (Id. at p. 1545.) The court held the anti-SLAPP statute applied to these two acts because they were protected activity as they were made in connection with an issue under consideration by a judicial body. (Id. at pp. 1548-1550.) The court acknowledged that most of the specific acts (16 total) alleged as a basis for the plaintiff's claims constituted nonprotected activity and were not subject to the anti-SLAPP statute, but "the mere fact that there are numerically far fewer allegations of protected wrongdoing than there are allegations of nonprotected wrongdoing does not mean that the allegations of protected activity are merely incidental to the causes of action or the nonprotected activity." (Id. at p. 1553.) The two protected acts were not incidental because if separately alleged these acts purported to identify a breach of fiduciary duty and each act could have been the sole and adequate basis for liability. (Id. at pp. 1551-1553.)