A strategic lawsuit against public participation ("SLAPP") is a form of litigation filed by a large corporation (or in some cases, a wealthy individual) to silence a less powerful critic by so severely burdening them with the cost of a legal defense that they abandon their criticism. The acronym was coined in the 1980s by University of Colorado professors Penelope Canan and George W. Pring.
The U.S. state of California has a statute, Code of Civil Procedure § 425.16, that is intended to prevent the misuse of litigation in SLAPP suits. About a dozen other states have followed California's example with similar statutes. These statutes usually create a special motion which a defendant can file at the outset of a lawsuit.
There is no direct equivalent in U.S. federal law; the closest available remedy is the Noerr-Pennington doctrine in federal antitrust law. According to Canan and Pring, this situation is probably because of differences in pleading requirements between federal and state civil procedure.
However, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has allowed California litigants to use their state's special motion in federal district courts located in California, in cases where the court is hearing at least one California state law claim through the doctrine of supplemental jurisdiction.
Critics of Scientology claim that the organization regularly files SLAPP lawsuits against its opponents, and that the practice was written into Scientology's texts by L. Ron Hubbard.
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