## Facts

- Two attorneys, Harnam S. Arneja (tenants’ counsel) and Robert W. Gildar (landlord’s counsel), represented opposing parties in a rent-control dispute involving a “small landlord” exemption under the District of Columbia Rental Housing Act of 1980.
- Arneja filed a petition with the D.C. Rental Accommodations Office challenging an exemption from rent control granted to the landlord’s property.
- While both attorneys and their clients waited in a hearing room at the Rental Accommodations Office for the hearing examiner to arrive, Gildar made unsolicited remarks criticizing Arneja’s pursuit of the case and competence, including statements implying Arneja did not understand the law and disparaging his education and English.
- For purposes of summary judgment, Gildar did not dispute making the remarks.
- Arneja alleged the remarks were malicious personal and ethnic attacks intended to damage his professional reputation, causing humiliation and pecuniary loss.
- Gildar asserted the remarks were aimed at encouraging settlement by persuading Arneja to abandon what Gildar viewed as an untenable position.

## Issues

1. Whether an attorney’s insulting remarks to opposing counsel, made in a hearing room immediately before a quasi-judicial proceeding and connected to counsel’s conduct of the case, are absolutely privileged and therefore cannot support a slander action.

## Decision

- The D.C. Court of Appeals affirmed summary judgment for Gildar.
- The court held the statements were made in the course of, or at least preliminary to, a quasi-judicial proceeding.
- The court held the statements were sufficiently related to the underlying dispute to fall within the judicial-proceedings (absolute) privilege.
- Because the privilege applied, the court did not reach whether the statements were defamatory.

## Legal Principles

- Attorneys have absolute immunity from civil liability for statements made in the course of judicial or quasi-judicial proceedings when the statements bear at least some relation to the proceeding.
- The privilege extends beyond statements made in open court to communications preliminary to a proposed proceeding.
- The relatedness requirement is satisfied unless the statements are so plainly unrelated to the controversy that their irrelevance is beyond reasonable dispute.
- When absolute privilege attaches, allegations of malice, bad faith, or reputational harm do not remove the immunity, and the court need not adjudicate defamation elements.

## Conclusion

The court held that disparaging remarks made by counsel in a hearing-room setting immediately before a rent-control adjudication were absolutely privileged because they were preliminary to, and sufficiently connected with, the pending proceeding, so the opposing lawyer’s slander claim was barred as a matter of law.


Arneja v. Gildar, 541 A.2d 621 (D.C. 1988)