First Amendment, Anti-SLAPP Motion, Breach of Contractual Indemnity Clause, 1, 4
Plaintiff sued the landlord of his ice cream store for damage suffered in a fire that began in a different part of the building and burnt the ice cream store to the ground. The landlord cross-complained for breach of the ice cream store’s lease provision which required the store to indemnify the landlord for any suit arising from its use of the store. According to the cross-complaint the ice cream store was required to, but hadn’t, indemnified the landlord against plaintiff’s suit. This decision affirms denial of plaintiff’s Anti-SLAPP motion to strike. The cross-complaint arose from the store’s breach of the lease’s indemnity clause, not from plaintiff’s petitioning activity in filing suit. The suit just triggered the indemnity obligation. So the breach of contract claims were not SLAPPs within CCP 425.16’s definition.