Facts
- Resolute Forest Products, Inc. and affiliates (Resolute) are forest-products companies engaged in timber harvesting and paper manufacturing.
- Greenpeace International, Greenpeace, Inc., Greenpeace Fund, and individual Greenpeace personnel conducted an advocacy campaign criticizing Resolute’s forestry practices in the Canadian boreal forest.
- Resolute and environmental groups previously participated in a cooperative agreement that included mutual commitments relating to conservation work and public campaigning.
- A 2010 report asserted that Resolute logged in an ecologically sensitive region known as the Montagnes Blanches; Resolute disputed the claim, and the report was later corrected after an acknowledged error.
- Resolute alleged that, despite the correction, Greenpeace personnel and entities continued circulating the uncorrected report and repeating the Montagnes Blanches logging accusation to customers and through online postings.
- A Quebec minister publicly criticized the report’s mapping as misleading and issued an official map relevant to the Montagnes Blanches location dispute; Resolute alleged the challenged report remained available on Greenpeace websites afterward.
- In late 2016 and 2017, Greenpeace communications again accused Resolute of logging in the Montagnes Blanches; Resolute sent a cease-and-desist letter demanding removal and cessation.
- Resolute also challenged broader Greenpeace messaging describing Resolute as a “Forest Destroyer,” “destroying endangered forests,” and “bad news for the climate,” alleging reputational and business harm.
Issues
- Whether Resolute was a limited-purpose public figure for the logging and conservation controversy, requiring pleading of actual malice for defamation.
- Which challenged statements were actionable assertions of verifiable fact versus protected opinion or rhetorical hyperbole on matters of public concern.
- Whether Resolute plausibly pleaded falsity, actual malice, and related elements for defamation and any derivative California Unfair Competition Law (UCL) theory.
- Whether the complaint plausibly stated RICO, trade libel, interference, and conspiracy claims based on the alleged advocacy campaign.
- Whether California’s anti-SLAPP statute required striking claims arising from protected activity absent a showing of probability of prevailing.
Decision
- The court held Resolute was a limited-purpose public figure regarding the public controversy over forest management and boreal-forest conservation and therefore had to plead actual malice for defamation.
- The court dismissed or struck nearly all challenged statements as non-actionable opinion, advocacy rhetoric, or hyperbole rather than verifiable statements of fact.
- The court allowed a narrow defamation theory to proceed based on specific statements asserting Resolute was logging in the Montagnes Blanches, allegedly made after the speaker was on notice the claim was false; a derivative UCL theory survived only to that extent.
- The court dismissed Resolute’s RICO claims for failure to plausibly allege required elements, including adequately pleaded predicate acts and a cognizable pattern and injury.
- The court dismissed trade libel, interference, and conspiracy claims for failure to plead required elements (including specific product disparagement for trade libel and independently wrongful conduct for interference).
- The court granted the anti-SLAPP motions in substantial part and denied them only as to the surviving Montagnes Blanches defamation theory and the derivative UCL theory.
Legal Principles
- A limited-purpose public figure bringing a defamation claim must plead (and ultimately prove) actual malice: knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for truth.
- In public debate, statements that are not reasonably susceptible of being proved true or false—such as value judgments, rhetorical hyperbole, and advocacy characterizations—are generally not actionable as defamation.
- A concrete, verifiable factual claim (e.g., whether a company logged in a specified place) can be actionable if plausibly pleaded as false and made with actual malice.
- RICO claims must satisfy federal pleading standards, including sufficiently pleaded predicate acts (with particularity when fraud is alleged) and a plausible pattern of racketeering activity causing a cognizable injury.
- Under California’s anti-SLAPP framework, claims arising from protected speech on issues of public interest are subject to striking unless the plaintiff demonstrates a probability of prevailing on each claim.
Conclusion
The court largely terminated Resolute’s broad claims challenging Greenpeace’s advocacy campaign, holding most statements were protected speech and that the RICO and related tort theories were inadequately pleaded, while permitting only a narrow defamation and derivative UCL claim to proceed based on specific, allegedly knowingly false assertions that Resolute logged in the Montagnes Blanches.