Robinson v. V. D.

Syllabus

The defendant appealed from the trial court's denial of his special motion to dismiss filed pursuant to the anti-SLAPP statute (§ 52-196a). He claimed that the court, inter alia, erred in determining that his alleged conduct, in connection with an application for a civil protection order and with respect to certain union grievance proceedings, did not relate to an exercise of a protected right in connection with a matter of public concern and, thus, fell outside the scope of § 52-196a. Held: The trial court erred in failing to dismiss all counts of the plaintiffs' underly- ing complaint, with the exception of the statutory and common-law vexatious litigation counts, as they were barred by absolute immunity under the litiga- tion privilege. The trial court erred in concluding that the defendant failed to meet his initial burden of proving that the allegations in the complaint regarding his conduct during the course of the union grievance proceedings implicated the exercise of his constitutional right to petition the government in connec- tion with a matter of public concern, the allegations of the complaint having sufficiently implicated potential and significant issues regarding the hiring practices within a governmental entity. The plaintiffs could not demonstrate probable cause that they would have prevailed on their claims of statutory or common-law vexatious litigation to the extent that those counts were based on the union grievance proceed- ings and, therefore, the special motion to dismiss should have been granted as to those counts. The trial court properly denied the special motion to dismiss with respect to the defendant's efforts to obtain a civil protection order, the defendant's conduct having arisen out of a wholly private dispute between the parties that did not have any appreciable connection to a matter of public concern, thus falling outside the ambit of § 52-196a and its intended protections. In accordance with federal law; see 18 U.S.C. § 2265 (d