Today, a Washington state court dismissed a lawsuit brought against the Olympia Food Coop by StandWithUs and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs:
[The] court dismissed the case, calling it a SLAPP – Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation – and said that it would award the defendants attorneys’ fees, costs, and sanctions. The judge also upheld the constitutionality of Washington’s anti-SLAPP law, which the plaintiffs had challenged.
In a court hearing last Thursday, lawyers from the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and Davis Wright Tremaine LLP argued that the court should grant the defendants’ Special Motion to Strike and dismiss the case because it targeted the constitutional rights of free speech and petition in connection with an issue of public concern.
“We are pleased the Court found this case to be what it is – an attempt to chill free speech on a matter of public concern. This sends a message to those trying to silence support of Palestinian human rights to think twice before they bring a lawsuit,” said Maria LaHood, a senior staff attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights.…We’re thrilled that the court saw fit to protect the board’s right to free speech. This decision affirms the right to engage in peaceful boycotts without fear of being dragged through expensive litigation,” said Bruce E.H. Johnson of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, who drafted Washington State’s Anti-SLAPP law.
…“Today’s victory is not only for the Co-op, but one for free speech,” said Jayne Kaszynski, spokesperson for the Olympia Food Co-op, and one of the defendants in the case.”
In this case, the issue was whether the food coop had the right to ban nine Israeli products from its shelves in support of the global BDS movement. This action was taken according to coop rules which permitted the board by concensus to approve this measure. The plaintiffs could’ve requested a vote of the entire membership to confirm or reject the board’s decision, but refused to go this route. They ran for the coop board in the next election on a platform that opposed the board’s BDS decision and lost.
Though five coop members sued the coop itself in this case, the plaintiffs were recruited by the right-wing pro-Israel advocacy group, StandWithUs and Israel’s Northwest Consul General, Akiva Tor. SWU and the MFA also recruited the lawyers representing the anti-BDS group. Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, told an Israeli TV news show that the government was using such suits in order to pre-empt what he called efforts to delegitimize Israel internationally. Thus, today’s court victory is a small, but important victory in the battle to bring Israel’s human rights abuses and illegal Occupation to a broader public audience. It is a defeat for the Israeli government and its NGO allies who seek to sweep such issues under the rug and use lawfare tactics to battle human rights activists.
The plaintiffs refuse to declare who is paying the legal fees and the attorney has refused to say that he is doing the case pro bono. Bob Sulkin, the senior partner responsible for the case, has been publicly associated with SWU fundraising efforts in the past and his wife is on the group’s board. It’s also not known who will be paying the fine and court costs ordered by the judge.
Plaintiff’s attorneys told The Olympian that the matter would be decided in the Court of Appeals or Supreme Court, indicating an appeal is likely. It would also appear that the Israeli government, seeing this type of lawfare as a potent strategy in the fight against what they see as delegitimization, would want to maintain the suit as long as possible and as high up the judicial food chain as possible. Even judicial sanctions and fines like the ones the judge levied today are unlikely to deter.
case by case…..one by one…..justice will prevail.
this quote says it all:
“the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice…”
attributed to Martin L. King, 1967…
Thanks for posting this Richard; in Southern California I would never have heard about this interesting and dare I say encouraging legal victory for liberty
Israeli intervention in Olympia Food Coop — misguided, dangerous.
What a lousy article. Crowing about this case as if its a victory. Wrong, Richard.
This case is an enormous victory for the Israel right wing power machine. They didn’t even lose yet!
And already anybody who was thinking of boycott better have a war chest of legal fees ready.
Why is it that only Israel right wingers can manifest legal attacks like this?
Why can not the left attack Israel right and left for war crimes, in the UN GA, in the Hague, direct and hard legal hits against easily proven water rights and land abuses?
Because the good … lack … all conviction. While the worst are full of a passionate intensity!
I’m afraid you got it wrong – the good guys are full of conviction.
It’s just that the bad guys’ pockets are deeper (and often replenished by the American taxpayer).
Boycotting Israei products is illegal per US law. The US DEpt. of Commerce ignores the law. Eventually, it will catch up. The Boycott is economic warfare by the Arab League against the Jews. It means 30% of Israel’s elderly and children (including Israeli Arabs) eat in soup kitchens. It does not hurt the power elite when hippie dippies in Washington State don’t buy hummus. Where’s the Tikkun Olam in that?
Spare me. Where is the law saying boycotts are illegal or are you reading from Danny Ayalon’s cue card? BDS has nothing to do with the Arab League. IT’s Palestinian-inspired. YOU’re talking about a boycott from decades ago that no longer exists.
Israeli elderly & children are in poverty not because of boycotts but because its Friedmanesque economic policies reward the wealthy & punish the poor.
And if you use any more dismissive insulting terms like the ones you did, you won’t be here long.
Help me understand this, Coop member: How can it be illegal for a collective to boycott any country? Could you tell us the story about how this law came to be? And are you one of the 5 Olympia members who are plaintiffs?
Thanks,
Tom McElheney
Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op
Member, Owner worker.
This SLAPP suit absolutely has astounded me in it’s stupidity.
LogoPhere refers to the plaintiffs, Kent Davis, Linda Davis, Susan Trinin, Jeffery Trinin, and Susan Mayer as the “DDT-5.” Their lawyer is Avi Lipman. http://something-stinks.com/WordPress/?p=101
They have made themselves public figures by filing the SLAPP suit against OFC, and I do not think we should let them hide behind “the plaintiffs” They are backed by the Israel-first organization, SWU, and, according to the Electronic Intifada, the Israeli government.
What is so stupid about the suit technically is that some bagel-brain decided to sue the ENTIRE current board of the OFC, plus previous board members — 16 defendants in all, I think it was.
The Washington state anti-SLAPP law says that each of these defendants “SHALL” now recover $10,000 as compensation from the plaintiffs — i.e., the court has no discretion. That looks like AT LEAST $160,000 to the defendants at a cost of $32,000 per plaintiff. This does not include the required award of the defendants’ attorneys’ fees. Ouch!
The stupid part is that the suit would have been just as effective in closing down the OFC BDS initiative if the suit had named only one or two current board members. But, noooooo. These uber-Zionists wanted to inflict as much pain as possible on as many of the OFC folks as possible. That’s precisely what a SLAPP suit is all about. Of course, they didn’t know when they filed their SLAPP suit that the Center for Constitutional Rights was going to step in and level the playing field.
When Oprah won her SLAPP suit filed by a bunch of Texas cowboys to penalize her for saying she’d never eat another hamburger, she summed it up: “Free speech rocks.”
Good on Washington State for passing this anti-SLAPP statute, good on Judge McPhee for applying it, and a great job by the Center for Constitutional Rights. I’m sending them a check tonight. These are my rights they’re fighting for.
Maybe the next time Israel considers taking on US citizens in a US court over the 1st Amendment, it will take a deep breath and re-think the whole thing before pulling the SLAPP trigger.
AA, I do not understand you. Short of judge putting the plaintiffs on a ducking stool, how the legal defeat could be more complete?
And sure, the plaintiffs can appeal and pay SLAPP penalties again.
Moreover, public rarely loves loosers with big pockets. PR side of the story is 100 times more important than legal.
The case got to trial, Piotr. And it looks like an appeal. Price? Millions of dollars. Anybody who wants to not buy some product is now in the crosshairs.
AA, no offense, but you don’t have even a vague clue what you are talking about.
The case did not get to trial — that’s the whole point. The case was bounced on defendants’ motion to dismiss. This is done in order to AVOID a trial. The anti-SLAPP law that was applied is there to avoid the cost of trial, which is exactly the way this worked out.
The price of an appeal — millions??? This is not a patent infringement case. The appeal, if the plaintiffs are stupid enough to pursue one, would go to the state supreme court and be decided on briefs and 1 round of oral arguments. This would be tens of thousands, perhaps. If the plaintiffs lose the appeal, which they will, they will pay the defendants’ appeal costs, too.
If the plaintiffs lose the state appeal, they would never in a thousand year seek review by the US Supreme Court. The plaintiffs’ lawyers may not be the brightest bananas in the basket, but they can’t be stupid enough to blow their loss up into a national case.