A United Talent Agency attorney who is the target of a defamation lawsuit filed by the former CEO and chairman of MediaLink wants a judge to dismiss the entire case on free-speech grounds.
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.”
“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 state in a motion filed Friday with Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Daniel S. Murphy. “The anti-SLAPP statute was designed to stop nonsense suits like this.”
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.
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 states. “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 alleges. “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 states.
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, which is scheduled for hearing on May 20.