SLAPP Suit Takes New Twist in Santa Barbara County Dispute

Rutted dirt roads carved decades ago by oil explorers are about the only signs of civilization on the grass-covered hills of Mission Oaks Ranch.

The serene setting, with cattle grazing and the occasional horseback rider, is lovely to look at but doesn’t bring in any money. So owner and developer Dan Alef asked Santa Barbara County officials for permission to divide his 3,877-acre property into 31 ranchettes, 100 acres each, for peace-seeking urban refugees like himself.

They rejected his request on environmental grounds. Alef’s response: He hired his own environmental consultants, who wrote a contradictory impact assessment--and then he sued county officials for breach of contract, saying their study was flawed and that they’d conspired to kill his project.

He lost the case, and when he appealed he lost again. The appeals court ruled that his suit was frivolous and ordered him to pay the county’s legal fees.

It was a new twist on what are known as SLAPP lawsuits, and it could have an impact across. Some civil libertarians say it will make it harder to fight City Hall.

The 2nd District Court of Appeal cited California’s law reining in “Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation.” Like similar statutes in about 14 other states, the SLAPP law is usually invoked to protect citizens who speak out from being harassed by frivolous court actions.

Typical examples: a New Mexico neighborhood association that was sued after it opposed a 56-lot development; an Indiana environmentalist sued by a land company for fighting a subdivision; a Rhode Island woman sued by the owners of a local landfill when she called their operation hazardous.

SLAPP statutes shielded all from the suits’ chilling effects.

In the California case, the appeals court ruled it was the county officials whose right to speak up was jeopardized. The SLAPP law, it said, protected them from Alef’s legal action. The 54-year-old developer was ordered to pay attorney’s fees for Santa Barbara County and the consultants it hired.

But this may be the first time a SLAPP law has been used to protect a government entity. Some see that as a bad precedent.

“What the court said was that SLAPP can be used against the citizen instead of in favor of the citizen who is seeking redress . . . it will have a chilling effect on citizens who try to bring suits against the government,” said Burt Pines, Alef’s attorney.

“This decision is dangerous,” agreed attorney James Burling, of the public interest group Pacific Legal Foundation.

He expressed that view in a letter to the California Supreme Court, but the higher court has declined to review the decision.

The SLAPP statute was designed to protect a citizen’s First Amendment right to free speech, not to be used as “a sword against private entities who bring lawsuits against the government,” Burling said.

His organization represents clients in cases against the government, usually for free. Faced with the threat of attorney’s fees, clients may decline to challenge environmental or other decisions, he said.

But many who support the ruling said applying the SLAPP statute to a case against the county is a natural progression of the law, enacted in 1995 and amended last year.

“The prototypical SLAPP situation is when a developer [sues] an environmentalist because he opposes a development,” said Mark Goldowitz, director of Oakland-based California Anti-SLAPP Project. “But the statute has a wide range. This is an incremental development in the law.”

Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Gail Marshall, whose district includes Mission Oaks Ranch, praised the decision.

“I’m happy we were able to assert our rights,” Marshall said. “I thought this was a very frivolous lawsuit. It’s unfortunate. We get a lot of them.”

George Pring, a University of Colorado-Denver law professor who coined the term “SLAPP” and coauthored the book “SLAPPs: Getting Sued for Speaking Out,” said the decision has national implications.

“California’s law is frequently the model for other states,” he said. “A decision like this in California will have a very significant effect nationally. It will be something that will be cited in every SLAPP case from now on when a government entity is one of the defendants.”

Alef is a former Los Angeles lawyer who lives near the ranch on his own spread--complete with horses--just off Highway 101 along California’s coast.

He said the hamlet of Buellton, population 4,500, elevation 450 and most famous for its split pea soup, is growing fast. His ranchettes would help curb the town’s expansion, he said, by limiting residential sites to two acres within each 100-acre ranchette; the remainder would be unfenced grazing land.

“I thought the project I developed was unintrusive, so the natural beauty would remain,” Alef said as he gazed across his golden rolling hills speckled with oak trees. “But I got hammered as if I was bringing in a major city.”

The changes Alef had proposed for the ranch required an Environmental Impact Report, which cost $190,000.

The consultants the county hired to draft the report found Alef’s proposal riddled with negative environmental impacts. The county used those findings to reject his project.

In response, Alef hired his own consultants, who offered dramatically different findings.

Alef then sued the county and its consultants for breach of contract, claiming they had conspired to kill his project and created a flawed environmental report to support their predetermined decision.

“I am so angered by the process because it was dishonest,” Alef said. But his attorney said he plans no further appeals.