A United Talent Agency attorney who was the target of a defamation lawsuit filed by the former CEO and chairman of MediaLink won dismissal of the entire case on free-speech grounds Tuesday.
Michael Kassan sued UTA lawyer Bryan J. Freedman for slander and libel stemming from a statement the attorney made in March to Deadline in which he called Kassan a “pathological liar.”
The state’s anti-SLAPP — Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation — law is intended to prevent people from using courts, and potential threats of a lawsuit, to intimidate those who are exercising their First Amendment rights. Freedman brought an anti-SLAPP motion in April and it was granted on Tuesday by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Daniel S. Murphy, who heard arguments Monday and took the issues under submission.
“The defamation claims fail as a matter of law because they are based on a non-actionable statement of opinion,” Murphy wrote. “Because the complaint targets protected activity and (Kassan) has failed to demonstrate a probability of success, the claims must be stricken.”
In their anti-SLAPP motion, Freedman’s attorneys were critical of the merits of the suit.
“This court has better things to do than further indulge a billionaire’s bruised ego and petulant tantrum targeting his litigation opponent’s lawyers in satellite litigation over a few words said in the heat of battle,” Freedman’s attorneys stated. “The anti-SLAPP statute was designed to stop nonsense suits like this.”
UTA bought MediaLink in 2021. Kassan says he resigned from UTA on March 6, but UTA maintains he actually was fired the next day.
“What has shaken up UTA the most is that Kassan negotiated for the right to compete if he elected to waive his $10 million severance package, which he did in his resignation letter,” the suit stated. “Since that time, UTA has done everything in its power to attempt to destroy Kassan with the hope that while UTA does not have a contractual non-compete, it could create a non-compete by defamation.”
Freedman “did not just say this to a few people, he said it to countless people via (the) Deadline article so he could inflict maximum damage,” the suit alleged. “Freedman broke the law by defaming Kassan, and as an agent of his clients, so too did they.”
The harm Freedman’s “false and malicious statements have caused cannot now be undone,” according to the suit brought March 28.
But according to the anti-SLAPP motion, rhetorical hyperbole is constitutionally protected even where it might otherwise suggest criminal conduct.
“Any reasonable reader of the March 25 Deadline article would quickly understand that Freedman … was in a setting adversarial to Kassan in Kassan’s dogfight with UTA, a great drama, where legal grenades were being thrown,” the defense motion stated.
Pinning the label “liar” on Kassan in the context of a bitter dispute with cross-allegations of dishonesty is “nonactionable,” according to Freedman’s attorneys’ motion.