## Facts

- Green Acres entities sold pre-need funeral plans using sales practices that had drawn regulatory scrutiny.
- Attorneys representing a putative class (lawyer defendants) prepared a class action complaint challenging Green Acres’ sales practices; May London and the Yoders were class members.
- Before the complaint was filed, the attorneys met with a reporter in a press-conference setting, provided a copy of the draft complaint, and discussed the allegations.
- The reporter published an article portraying Green Acres as cheating or defrauding elderly customers; Green Acres alleged the article’s defamatory content derived from the attorneys’ communications, not from in-court statements.
- Green Acres sued the class members and the attorneys for defamation based on the extra-judicial statements to the reporter.

## Issues

1. Whether attorneys’ pre-filing statements to the news media about contemplated litigation are protected by Arizona’s absolute judicial-proceedings (litigation) privilege, barring a defamation claim as a matter of law.
2. How far the judicial-proceedings privilege extends to extra-judicial communications by attorneys.

## Decision

- The Arizona Supreme Court affirmed in part and reversed in part.
- The court approved summary judgment for the non-lawyer defendants (London and the Yoders).
- The court vacated the court of appeals’ ruling as to the lawyer defendants and reversed summary judgment for them.
- The court held the attorneys’ communications to the press were not protected by an absolute litigation privilege and remanded for further proceedings on the defamation claims against the attorneys.

## Legal Principles

- Arizona recognizes an absolute judicial-proceedings privilege for statements made in the course of, and sufficiently related to, judicial proceedings (e.g., pleadings, hearings, and other communications functionally tied to adjudication).
- The privilege is limited in scope; extra-judicial communications are not automatically covered merely because they concern litigation.
- Attorney statements to the general news media about pending or contemplated litigation are extra-judicial and, as a category, are not protected by absolute immunity.
- For any litigation-related protection to apply to extra-judicial communications, both the content and the manner of the communication must bear some relation to the proceeding; public-relations communications to the press generally fall outside the core purpose of the privilege.

## Conclusion

The Arizona Supreme Court refused to extend absolute litigation privilege to attorneys’ pre-filing statements to the press about a contemplated class action, allowing Green Acres’ defamation claims against the attorneys to proceed while leaving intact summary judgment for the non-lawyer class members.


Green Acres Tr. v. London, 141 Ariz. 609, 688 P.2d 617 (Ariz. 1984)