The Broadcast Film Critics Association is citing free-speech grounds in asking a judge to dismiss a defamation suit brought by the Hollywood Creative Alliance that is related to the association’s call for members to leave the HCA if they want to remain association members.
“All causes of action in the complaint are based solely upon (the association’s) acts in furtherance of their First Amendment rights because each is based on a privileged email from the board of directors of (the association) to its members,” according to an anti-SLAPP motion filed April 11 by defense attorneys.
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.
The HCA suit filed Jan. 29 in Van Nuys Superior Court alleges that the association has maligned the HCA’s reputation in an attempt to “boycott and steal” HCA members. The suit seeks injunctive relief as well as compensatory and punitive damages. Association co-founder Joey Berlin also is a defendant.
The HCA has suffered “great and irreparable harm” due to the association’s alleged interference with its relationships and prospective economic advantage and is entitled to an order restraining the association from “issuing or enforcing its boycott and requiring a retraction of its false statements…,” the suit states.
Prior to the suit’s filing, the association announced that HCA members would no longer be allowed to be association members and that those who were members of both groups would need to prove they had left the HCA if they wanted to keep their association membership.
The association’s actions caused dozens of HCA members to resign after they made “heartfelt” apologies to HCA leadership, the suit states.
But in their anti-SLAPP motion, association lawyers argue that an “indispensable component of the freedom of association is the freedom to identify the people who constitute the association and to limit the association to those people only,” adding, that the composition of a membership “defines the quality and character of the group.”
The association was founded in 1995 and is made up of more than 600 television, radio and online critics, journalists and bloggers. The HCA was created in 2016 to celebrate and elevate diverse and underrepresented voices in film criticism. It was originally called the Los Angeles Online Film Critics Society and later the Hollywood Critics Association before being more recently given its current name.
A hearing on the anti-SLAPP motion is scheduled May 8 before Judge Eric Harmon.