Mahoney

I. BACKGROUND

Lee is an osteopathic doctor and operates a business called Biz MedSpa that offers non-surgical facial aesthetic treatments. Huang and defendant Fang Wang were patrons of Lee’s business. Plaintiffs alleged that defendants were mother and daughter.

attorneys were served with the substitution motion. We granted the unopposed motion on January 13, 2025. (Cal. Rules of Court, rule 8.36(a).)

2 A. The Complaint In July 2022, plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against Wang and Huang. The complaint alleged that in June 2021, Wang received a facial treatment from Biz MedSpa. Afterwards, she demanded a refund, which Lee refused. Dissatisfied with Lee’s response, defendants posted defamatory statements on at least two social media web sites, WeChat and The Little Red Book (or Redbook) over the span of several days attacking plaintiffs’ reputation. The complaint attributed many of the alleged statements to Wang but asserted that “any posts appearing to have been posted by . . . Wang were in fact posted by both” defendants. As relevant to this appeal, the complaint asserted causes of action for “defamation/libel” (capitalization and boldface omitted), intentional interference with…