The European Union adopts an anti-SLAPP directive

The European Parliament adopted a Anti-SLAPP Policy on February 27, 2024, giving EU member states two years to include the anti-SLAPP laws into their very own laws. The EU directive is often called Daphne’s Law in keeping with investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Walnut in Malta, which was facing 48 lawsuits on the time of its automobile bomb attack in 2017. In general, the EU Directive appears to be according to the Uniform Public Expression Protection Act (UPEPA) and similar US state laws, which has been adopted within the US in most of its key provisions. These provisions include expedited review of a case to find out whether it ultimately has merit, and that voluntary dismissal doesn’t protect a wrongdoer from paying legal fees. In fact, the EU Directive goes further in protecting victims of SLAPP lawsuits, for instance by requiring the plaintiff to post security within the event of reimbursement of legal fees and by providing the victim with a defense and emotional counseling.

In the EU, once such a directive is promulgated, each EU member state must enact its own laws that fall under the directive. The reason the EU doesn’t simply prescribe a selected law is that there are different legal systems within the EU (mainly English common law and Roman/Napoleonic civil law), so each state must put the EU directive into its own workable legal form. This is somewhat much like how the Uniform Law Commission offers its legislative products to the US states, however the US states have complete discretion to enact non-uniform provisions which will substantially change an otherwise uniform law, however the EU member states cannot deviate from the core of the directive.

The Council of Europe also launched its own Recommendation for the adoption of anti-SLAPP laws by its member states, which include countries which might be members of the Council of Europe but will not be EU members. These recommendations are, unsurprisingly, very much like those within the EU Directive, but additionally contain some very interesting provisions of their very own. example is the definition of SLAPP claims set out below, which really takes this to a different level:

“Definition criteria of SLAPPs

“5. Targeting public participation – The purpose of the motion is to abuse the legal process to forestall, obstruct, restrict or penalise freedom of expression in matters of public interest and the exercise of rights related to public participation.

“6. Coverage of all causes of motion – Lawsuits can involve the misuse or abuse of all sorts of statutes or common law to forestall, obstruct, restrict, or penalize contributions to public debate, including but not limited to defamation, libel, invasion of privacy, conspiracy, violation of mental property rights, economic interference, or infliction of emotional harm. While this generally means a civil motion, in some jurisdictions it is feasible to trigger misdemeanor, administrative motion, or criminal charges against critics, including through using injunctions. This definition also extends to “legal intimidation tactics” – interim or preliminary measures, aggressive subpoenas, or easy threats designed to get the opposite party to back down.

“7. All stages of the legal process – All stages of the legal process are relevant, including the initial threat of legal motion, which in itself can have a chilling effect on public participation, and enforcement proceedings.

“SLAPP indicators

“8. SLAPPs occur in alternative ways and might be identified by various indicators. These indicators include, but will not be limited to, the next elements:

‘a. the plaintiff seeks to take advantage of an imbalance of power, similar to his financial advantage or his political or social influence, to exert pressure on the defendant;

‘b. the arguments recommend by the applicant are partly or wholly unfounded;

‘c. the remedies sought by the claimant are disproportionate, excessive or unreasonable;

(d) the claims constitute an abuse of law or process;

‘e. the plaintiff uses procedural and litigation tactics designed to increase the defendant’s costs, similar to delaying proceedings, selecting a forum which is inconvenient for public participation or which harasses the defendant, making a large workload and pursuing remedies with little or no prospect of success;

‘f. the motion is deliberately directed against individuals and never against the organisations accountable for the motion being brought;

‘g. the motion is accompanied by a public relations offensive geared toward intimidating, discrediting or intimidating actors involved in the general public debate or at diverting attention from the essential issue at stake;

‘h. the complainant or his or her representatives are engaging in, or have engaged in, legal intimidation, harassment or threats;

‘i. the claimant or related parties bring multiple, coordinated or cross-border actions based on the identical facts or in respect of comparable matters;

‘j. the claimant systematically refuses to make use of out-of-court mechanisms to settle the claim.

“9. While SLAPPs do not necessarily include all of these indicators, the more of them present or the more acute the conduct, the more likely the lawsuit may be considered a SLAPP.”

At concerning the same time that the above documents were published, the United Nations Human Rights Commission also published The impact of SLAPPs on human rights. As the name suggests, this document describes the impact of SLAPP lawsuits on civil liberties on the whole and freedom of expression on the whole. In addition to suggesting that countries pass anti-SLAPP laws, this UN document also calls for countries to decriminalize defamation in those jurisdictions where it remains to be a criminal offense. For example, Amanda Knox was recently convicted of insult in Italy.

The point here is that some people see anti-SLAPP laws as an invention and peculiarity of the United States, that such laws are actually spreading throughout a big a part of the developed world and will soon be a vital a part of international law. This is nice free of charge speech, since the passage of every latest anti-SLAPP law has the effect of reducing the variety of jurisdictions by which an abusive litigant can select a court, often called Defamation Tourismto harass their legitimate critics and others.

Let’s put an end to this. Worldwide.