Rosenaur

Introduction

Following a bitterly fought local initiative campaign concerning the commercial development of certain real property in Loomis, plaintiff David Rosenaur sued his political opponents—defendants Walt Scherer, Lorell Long, Walt Scherer For Town Council, and the Loomis Community Action Committee—for defamation and slander of title. The suit was based on a heated exchange at a shopping center in which one of the defendants purportedly called plaintiff a “thief’ and on statements in defendants’ campaign literature that the property at issue was owned by “a partnership of speculators based in Los Angeles.” The trial court granted defendants’ motion to strike the complaint pursuant to Code of Civil Procedure section 425.16, commonly known as the “anti-SLAPP statute,” and awarded them attorney fees.

Plaintiff appeals. He claims that he made out a prima facie claim of defamation sufficient to survive a motion to strike under section 425.16.

We shall affirm the judgment. First, “[w]hether published material is reasonably susceptible of an interpretation which implies a provably false assertion of fact—the dispositive question in a defamation action—is a question of…