L.A. Taxi Cooperative, Inc. v. Independent Taxi Owners Ass'n

INTRODUCTION

Plaintiffs L.A. Taxi Cooperative, Inc., doing business as Los Angeles Yellow Cab (Yellow Cab), and Bell Cab Company, Inc. (Bell Cab), sued defendants The Independent Taxi Owners Association of Los Angeles (ITOA), L.A. Checker Cab Cooperative, Inc. (Checker Cab), and Leonid Satanovsky for false advertising on the Internet. Defendants filed a special motion to strike plaintiffs’ entire complaint pursuant to Code of Civil Procedure section 425.16 (the anti-SLAPP motion). The trial court denied the anti-SLAPP motion, ruling that defendants had not met their threshold burden of showing that the alleged false advertising fell within the purview of section 425.16 (the anti-SLAPP statute). Defendants appeal, contending that the alleged false advertising constituted communications on matters of public interest made in a public forum. Plaintiffs filed a cross-appeal, contending that the trial court erred in declining to find that section 425.17, subdivision (c), the commercial speech exemption to the anti-SLAPP statute, applied to bar defendants’ anti-SLAPP motion. Plaintiffs separately appealed from the denial of their motion for fees and costs under section 425.16,…