Because I am decidedly un-hip and un-young, I did not know anything about celebrity jeweler Ben "The Baller" Yang before this opinion, which involves a lawsuit concerning a birthday party cake that Mr. Yang ordered but decidedly did not appreciate.
I do not think that Mr. Yang comes off looking very good here. A reader may well get the impression -- as I did -- that Mr. Yang acted like a bully, using his celebrity as a bludgeon against a small bakery who made a cake that he didn't enjoy. ("According to Big Sugar’s employees, Yang called and said they had put drugs on a cake for a seven year old and that he had a TV show, a podcast, and over a million followers who would destroy Big Sugar. Then he hung up. [To be clear: the bakery did not, in fact, put drugs on the cake, but some of the decorations on the "mad science" cake Yang ordered may indeed look like pills.] He called back and told a second employee to “put that fucking bitch on the phone,” but he hung up before the first employee could get to the phone. Yang called a third time and again threatened to destroy Big Sugar, mentioning his social media followers and his podcast." Then Mr. Yang repeatedly "cancelled" the bakery on Twitter and on podcasts, with claims that included: "This was a 7 year old kid’s party. They put prescription drugs. They put molly. They put Percocets.”
The anti-SLAPP motion that Mr. Yang files loses in both the trial court and in the Court of Appeal. It's an easy call on that front, IMHO. Mr. Yang's somewhat lucky not to get sanctioned for a frivolous appeal; to me, again, this is not a close case.
Apparently, Mr. Yang's lawyers are from "The Cochran Firm," a paean to Johnnie Cochran. Maybe if you're an Internet celebrity, you still get to tell people a version of "I got Johnnie Cochran defending me," even though he's dead.
