Doppes

INTRODUCTION

August B. Doppes filed a lawsuit against the individual members of the 1 board of directors of his homeowners association. He asserted derivative causes of action for breach of fiduciary duty and declaratory relief based on allegations the Board Members voted to approve heightened fines to enforce timely completion of construction on custom lots and a fee to cover the increased costs of road maintenance and repair resulting from increasing amounts of construction traffic. He also alleged the Board Members breached their fiduciary duties by secretly negotiating with certain homeowners and reaching secret agreements with them to reduce those fines and fees. Doppes appeals from an order granting the Board Members’ special motion to strike each of Doppes’s causes of action pursuant to Code of Civil Procedure section 2 425.16, the anti-SLAPP statute. The trial court concluded that all of Doppes’s causes of action arose out of the Board Members’ decisions to approve the fines and fees, which constituted acts in furtherance of the Board Members’ right of petition or free speech. On appeal, as in the trial court, the parties have taken an outdated approach to determining…