CHICAGO - An Illinois appeals court has dealt a blow to an attempt by the owner of the Hollywood Reporter to quickly dispose of a defamation lawsuit brought by a woman who claimed she had been wrongly smeared by the publication's coverage of the 2014 Sony Pictures hack.
The appeals court ruled it couldn't rule on a Cook County judge's decision to allow the lawsuit to continue, even though publisher Prometheus Global Media LLC argued the defamation lawsuit should fail under a California law that prohibits allegedly meritless lawsuits filed just to cause headaches for the target.
Prometheus Global Media, owner of The Hollywood Reporter, is fighting for the dismissal of a defamation lawsuit filed by a former Sony employee. Nicole Basile, a payroll accountant in the entertainment industry. Basile sued the company after a December 2014 article about a well-publicized hack at Sony Pictures Entertainment. The hack resulted in Sony data – including confidential employee information and unreleased movies – being leaked onto the Internet.
The Hollywood Reporter article says journalists were alerted to the hack through emails from a sender named Nicole Basile. The article goes on to describe the plaintiff’s past employment at Sony and says she could not be reached for comment. The article cites multiple sources who said the hack appeared to be an inside job by a disgruntled employee or past employee.
A federal district court judge dismissed a federal defamation suit brought by Basile. When it was discovered on appeal that Prometheus has an Illinois presence, the federal appellate court dismissed the case for lack of jurisdiction. Basile then filed a complaint in Cook County Circuit Court.
Arguing that Basile’s claims were doomed to fail under Illinois law, Prometheus moved to dismiss the claim under California’s anti-SLAPP law, a law intended to prevent meritless lawsuits aimed at chilling speech. The company said the California law should be applied because the article had originated from The Hollywood Reporter’s California office.
Basile countered that if anti-SLAPP statutes were to be argued, the narrower Illinois law should apply because the case was filed in Illinois and both parties are Illinois citizens. She maintained, however, that even under California law her suit would survive dismissal. The Cook County judge ruled against Prometheus, which appealed to the Illinois First District Appellate Court.
In their analysis, First District Appellate Justices Cynthia Y. Cobbs, David W. Ellis and Margaret S. McBride dove into the technicalities of the appellate court’s jurisdiction over interlocutory appeals. The court typically considers only appeals of final judgements, Cobbs wrote in the court’s order.
Prometheus was granted a permissive interlocutory appeal under a Supreme Court rule that applies only to circuit court orders denying a motion to dispose under Illinois’ anti-SLAPP act. The court found Prometheus’ motion, because it relies on California’s law and not Illinois’, falls outside the court’s jurisdiction.
“The language of [the rule] plainly and clearly requires a defendant to have filed ‘a motion to dispose under the Citizen Participation Act,’” Cobbs wrote. “Defendant’s motion to dismiss here … relies solely on the protections of California law. Indeed, defendant’s position … was that the Citizen Participation Act has no application to this case.”
Cobbs noted the circuit court found Prometheus’ motion failed under either state’s statute. Because the circuit court ruling falls outside the Supreme Court rule, the appellate court has no jurisdiction to review it. The interlocutory appeal was summarily dismissed.
The court’s decision was filed under Supreme Court Rule 23, prohibiting it from being cited as precedent except under limited circumstances.
According to Cook County court records, Basile has been represented in the action by attorneys Rodney Smolla, of Wilmington, Del., and Gregory Bedell, of Chicago.
Prometheus has been represented by the firm of Cozen O'Connor, of Chicago.