Supco upholds R.I. anti-SLAPP law

“Before I built a wall I’d ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence.”
– Robert Frost, “The Mending Wall”

A unit owner in a Newport condominium community intent on expanding the footprint of his townhouse-style unit by “walling in” portions of the commonly owned land surrounding it – without first obtaining the consent of his fellow unit owners as required under state law – clearly gave offense to his neighbors.
The Rhode Island Supreme Court recently resolved the ensuing litigation in favor of those neighbors, and, in so doing, also upheld Rhode Island’s “anti-SLAPP” statute to defeat the slander-of-title and breach-of-contract claims the unit owner had asserted against the group of neighbors who opposed his expansion plans.
The court’s primary task was to decide whether the state’s condominium act permitted the unit owner, Bennie Sisto, to expand his Goat Island condo unit beyond its existing walls without first obtaining the unanimous consent of the 153 other unit owners who shared ownership of that land.
The court held that the law does not allow a unit owner to unilaterally expand a unit’s boundaries – even if condominium documents say otherwise. The court’s ruling is of great importance to the state’s condominium community, but its elucidation of the contours of Rhode Island’s anti-SLAPP statute, and the types of speech that it protects and litigation it is meant to deter is of greater importance to the business community and general public.
SLAPP is an acronym for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation.
To help deter these lawsuits, the Rhode Island law entitles a party who successfully defends against a SLAPP claim to recoup attorneys’ fees and costs. Anti-SLAPP litigation is not often associated with neighborhood property disputes. Historically, SLAPP cases more typically have involved large private interests bringing meritless lawsuits to intimidate individual citizens and deter them from exercising their political or legal rights.
In the case before the court (Sisto v. American Condominium Association, et al.), the individual unit owner filed an application with the Coastal Resources Management Council for approval to demolish his existing unit and build a larger one. The proposed footprint of the expanded unit was to extend beyond the original footprint, over and onto land that is owned in undivided percentage interests by each of the 154 unit owners in the Goat Island South Condominium in Newport.
This prompted his neighbors to send a letter to the CRMC objecting to the planned expansion. In the letter, the neighbors contended that Sisto did not have sufficient title in the land he proposed to include in his expanded unit.
Sisto responded by suing the condominium association and other related entities, claiming in part slander of title and breach of contract. He alleged that the association’s written objection to the CRMC was intentionally deceitful and breached the Goat Island South Declaration of Condominium.
The association invoked the protection of the anti-SLAPP statute. The Supreme Court affirmed a lower court’s ruling that the association’s written objection to the CRMC was an exercise of free speech to a governmental body, and that the free speech dealt with a matter of public concern.
The Supreme Court also considered a third factor: whether the contents of the objections were a “sham.” Analysis of this final factor of the anti-SLAPP law focuses on whether the speech in question is “genuinely aimed at procuring favorable government action.” The Supreme Court held that the condominium association’s objections to the CRMC were reasonable attempts to alert the CRMC that Sisto did not have sufficient ownership of the land over which he sought to expand his unit.
Interestingly, the court upheld the association’s anti-SLAPP rights even though its written objection contained a technical misstatement concerning the extent of Sisto’s ownership interest in the disputed land. This arguably expands the scope of the anti-SLAPP protection.
The court also affirmed that the objections were aimed at preventing the expansion, and not at merely using the CRMC’s process to delay the expansion.
In granting anti-SLAPP protection to a condominium association that was sued by a unit owner, the court looked beyond the identity of the parties and the stereotypes of SLAPP suits as “David v. Goliath.” As the court reiterated, “The anti-SLAPP statute was enacted to prevent vexatious lawsuits against citizens who exercise their First Amendment rights of free speech and legitimate petitioning by granting those activities conditional immunity from punitive civil claims.”
One’s neighbor or business competitor is just as capable of bringing a vexatious suit designed to intimidate and chill free speech as is some outsized corporate titan. Defendants in such actions can at least take solace in the knowledge that their immunity will be assessed based on the merits of their speech, regardless of the identity of their opponent. •


Tim Groves is a business-litigation attorney at the Providence law firm of Barton Gilman LLP. He represented the condominium association in the case discussed in this article.

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