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Non-Verbatim Repetition of Posted Allegations on Different Website Not a New Publication—C.A.
Opinion Says Single-Publication Rule Pertains
By a MetNews Staff Writer
Once defamatory comments are published on the Internet, the one-year statute of limitation begins running, and does not restart where allegations of the same sort are later published on another website, the Fifth District Court of Appeal declared yesterday, rejecting the contention that the conclusion conflicts with the holding in a case involving a libel suit by Charles Manson’s lawyer against prosecutor-turned writer Vincent Bugliosi.
The case deals with the applicability of the single-publication rule embodied in Civil Code §3425.3, which provides, in part:
“No person shall have more than one cause of action for damages for libel or slander or invasion of privacy or any other tort founded upon any single publication or exhibition or utterance, such as any one issue of a newspaper or book or magazine or any one presentation to an audience or any one broadcast over radio or television or any one exhibition of a motion picture.”
The plaintiffs in the present case, Richard Jones and two of his businesses, were targets of defendant Connie Reekes, who posted highly disparaging remarks about the plaintiffs on a Facebook page, “Eyes on Ewe,” which was taken down on May 12, 2019. The allegations, centering on involvement in purported political corruption, were reposted by her—but not verbatim—in 2020 on ‘The Real California City News’ Facebook pages.”
The plaintiffs sued Reekes on Oct. 28, 2020. Kern Superior Court Judge David R. Lampe granted a special motion to strike under the anti-SLAPP statute, Code of Civil Procedure §425.16. While the allegations came under the first prong of the statute, protected speech, the plaintiffs failed to meet their burden under the second prong—showing a probability of succeeding on the merits—because the action was time-barred, the judge ruled.
The Court of Appeal affirmed in an unpublished opinion by Justice Mark W. Snauffer. He wrote:
“Under the single-publication rule, the statute of limitations on a cause of action for defamation based upon a written statement runs from the date the statement is ‘first generally distributed to the public, regardless of the date on which the plaintiff actually learned of the existence of the [publication] and read its contents.’…[E]ven if access to ‘Eyes on Ewe’ was limited (to those who subscribed to that Facebook account), Reekes’s postings to that Facebook page constituted a ‘publication’ for purposes of the single-publication rule.”
To be timely, Snauffer, said, the action would have to have been brought within one year of the dismantling of the “Eyes on Ewe” Facebook page on Raikes’s May 12, 2019.
Kanarek v. Bugliosi
The plaintiffs pointed to the July 17, 1980 decision of the Court of Appeal for this district in Kanarek v. Bugliosi. Quirky criminal defense lawyer Irving A. Kanarek sued Bugliosi over comments concerning him in the ex-prosecutor’s best-selling book on the Manson cases, “Helter Skelter.”
(Kanarek and Bugliosi are both deceased.)
The question was whether Kanarek could sue based on a reprinting of the book in paperback form.
Then-Presiding Justice Arleigh Woods wrote:
“At issue here is whether the republication of a hardcover book in paperback form is a new issue of that book so as to give rise to a new cause of action. No California case precisely on point has been discovered. But our study of the history of the statute and its purpose leads us to conclude that all copies of the hardbound first edition of the book gave rise to one cause of action; the republication of that book in paperback form is a new ‘issue.’ ”
Cases Distinguishable
That was different, Snauffer said, explaining:
“Jones claims that some of Reekes’s posts and comments in ‘The Real California City News’ were made in 2020 and constituted republications of Reekes’s original allegedly defamatory posts and comments. However, the alleged republications differ from the claimed original statements and do not appear to be literal republications.”
Snauffer also said that a woman who had taken screenshots of the “Reyes on Ewe” pages and shared them with another individual within one year of the complaint being filed “did not did not constitute a republication,” reasoning that “[i]t was not reasonably foreseeable and was not directed to the public generally.” The delayed discovery rule, the jurist wrote, is inapplicable because there was “ample evidence from which it reasonably concluded that Jones could easily have discovered the alleged injury in this case.”
The case is Jones v. Reekes, F082499.
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