This is one of those (rare) days in which there's stuff from the appellate judiciary in California but not much exciting stuff. Or at least not much that's particularly exciting to talk about. We'll see if the Court of Appeal publishes something this afternoon that's the exception to today's rule.
In the meantime, at a minimum, this opinion from the California Supreme Court is worth at least knowing about. It's an anti-SLAPP appeal that holds that you can consider the "context" of the underlying speech -- e.g., that it's commercial speech -- in deciding whether it qualifies as "conduct in furtherance of the exercise of the constitutional right
of petition or the constitutional right of free speech in connection
with a public issue or an issue of public interest” under the "residual" anti-SLAPP provision in Section 425.16(e)(4).
That doesn't mean that no commercial speech is covered. But in "evaluating" whether subsection (e)(4) applies, the California Supreme Court basically says that you can look at everything. Everything. So go ahead and do so.
A narrow but nonetheless important part of California's evolving anti-SLAPP jurisprudence.
