Real Estate Litigation Article: Of Sexy Phone Calls and Well-Aimed Golf Balls: Anti-SLAPP Statutes in Recent Land-Use Damages Litigation
7/1/2004
Written by Mintz Levin Member, Paul D. Wilson, for The Urban Lawyer, Spring 2004
"SLAPP" is an acronym for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. Late in the Twentieth Century, many state legislatures detected a dangerous trend; real estate developers, upset about opposition to their projects, were cowing project opponents into submission by filing frivolous lawsuits against them. These legislatures responded by enacting what are commonly called "Anti-SLAPP" statutes, whose goal is to let the project opponent out of the courthouse almost as quickly as the developer dragged him in, and to let him out at the developers expense at that.
Paul is a member in the firm's Boston office and practices in the Litigation Section. A general civil litigator, he has significant expertise in real estate and land use disputes, in health care litigation, and in business disputes that involve allegations of bad faith or unfair practices.
