Defamation—The SCOTX Report

23-0634·Petition For Review

A trial court errs by granting a Texas Citizens Participation Act motion to dismiss after the statute's 30-day ruling deadline has passed and the motion was overruled by operation of law, but the error is harmless and does not warrant reversal if the ruling comes within the 20-day period in which the movant could have appealed the denial by operation of law; the order is not void.
Collateral estoppel from a federal personal-jurisdiction dismissal did not entitle the defendants to summary judgment, because they did not conclusively show that the purposeful-direction findings are identical to the issues that decide the Texas tort claims, or that two new defendants were in privity with the Colorado defendants.

23-0955·Petition For Review

The TCPA applies to a claim for negligent hiring, training or supervision when at least one of the underlying tortious acts, such as an employee's allegedly false theft accusation to police, is based on or in response to the defendant's exercise of the right of free speech; the court of appeals wrongly required that the claim be "entirely" based on protected activity.
The plaintiff did not carry her burden to avoid dismissal, because she offered no evidence of the employee's hiring, training or supervision, a standard of care, a breach, or proximate cause, so the Court rendered judgment dismissing the negligent-hiring claim.

23-0993·Petition For Review

A motion to compel discovery and for monetary sanctions is not a "legal action" subject to dismissal under the Texas Citizens Participation Act, because under the ejusdem generis canon the statute's catch-all covers only filings like a lawsuit, petition, cross-claim or counterclaim, which start or materially amend a proceeding on a substantive claim.
A party facing such a motion should oppose it or seek Chapter 10 or Rule 13 sanctions for frivolousness, not file a TCPA motion, which would stay discovery and trigger an interlocutory appeal over an ancillary dispute.

24-0368·Certified Question

A person who supplies defamatory material to another for publication may be liable for defamation if the person intends or knows that it will be published.
A defamation plaintiff can survive summary judgment without identifying the specific statements the defendant made in supplying the material if direct or circumstantial evidence is legally sufficient to show the defendant was the source of the identified defamatory statements.

24-0616·Certified Question

Answering a Fifth Circuit certified question, the Court held that Labor Code chapter 21 (the Texas employment-discrimination statute) does not abrogate a plaintiff-employee's common-law defamation and fraud claims against another employee, even when they are based on the same course of conduct as discrimination and retaliation claims against the employer, because there is no clear repugnance between them.
Waffle House's rule that chapter 21 is the exclusive remedy against an employer when the gravamen is covered discrimination stands; a plaintiff still cannot obtain a double recovery, and if her only substantive claim is discrimination or retaliation, chapter 21 remains exclusive.

25-0534·Petition For Review

Whether the Texas Citizens Participation Act's bodily-injury exemption, which covers "a legal action seeking recovery for bodily injury, wrongful death, or survival" and "statements made regarding that legal action," applies to a fee-sharing dispute between two law firms arising from earlier bodily-injury litigation, or only to statements about the nonmovant's own pending bodily-injury action.
Whether courts must ordinarily decide first, under the TCPA's burden-shifting structure, whether the movant has shown the Act applies before deciding whether an exemption does.

25-0897·Petition For Review

Whether an attorney's communications to a government agency reporting a client's allegation of fraud, made on the client's behalf, are an exercise of the right to petition or of free speech on a matter of public concern under the Texas Citizens Participation Act.
Whether the court of appeals misapplied the TCPA's exclusion for private economic dealings, and whether the attorney established the affirmative defenses of attorney immunity and quasi-judicial immunity as a matter of law.

25-0948·Petition For Review

Whether a woman's reports to the U.S. Small Business Administration that her then-husband obtained CARES Act emergency loans in her name through identity theft were an exercise of free speech on a matter of public concern or of the right to petition, so that the Texas Citizens Participation Act applies to his defamation suit against her.
Whether the court of appeals erred in holding that the trial court properly denied her TCPA motion to dismiss.

25-0995·Petition For Review

Did the court of appeals err in letting a former legislator's defamation claim survive a TCPA motion to dismiss over campaign signs calling him "convicted" and "dishonorably discharged," including by finding actual malice from a cease-and-desist letter and a refusal to retract?
Did he fail to present clear and specific evidence on the statements he pleaded, and do substantial truth, the libel-proof doctrine, the Defamation Mitigation Act, and Section 230 bar his claims?