"A Gross Abuse?" by Daniel Guss
Karen Bass appointee Larry Gross claims defamation. But a court hearing tomorrow may determine whether his lawsuit against a deeply respected animal rescuer deserves anti-SLAPP consequences
The government of the City of Los Angeles has long had a political erection for censorship of its critics. It comes, pun intended, in various forms of retaliation, including its infamous history of SLAPPs, or Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation.
A SLAPP is a malicious lawsuit intended to intimidate, silence and/or punish someone for speaking out on a matter of great public interest. They are often disguised as defamation lawsuits.
Its antidote is an anti-SLAPP motion, which brings the potential for serious consequences if the court determines that the SLAPP is, in lay terms, censorship, retaliation or insufficiently substantiated et al.
The Institute for Free Speech, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational foundation, ranks California as having one of the nation’s strongest anti-SLAPP laws, with an overall A+ rating.
Last week, this column exclusively reported that PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, was going to participate in a City Hall protest condemning LA Mayor Karen Bass and the LA City Council for their deadly, diseased failures at LA Animal Services, LAAS. In the past year, conditions at LAAS have worsened severely, resulting in, among other things, a criminal animal cruelty investigation by the LA County District Attorney. In the past few days, TV news reports are finally shining a bright light on an LAAS insider’s report that at least 800 healthy, adoptable dogs, cats and other animals would be killed because City Hall continues to fail miserably on LAAS humane policies while falsely claiming that Los Angeles is a “No Kill” city.
Some of the blame for these conditions is placed by the public on Larry Gross, Bass’s appointee to the LAAS Commission, where as a holdover appointee from the Garcetti administration, he has for years served as its president. This makes Gross a public figure; a role he has publicly relished while using private, unpublished email accounts to conduct official city business without the public being aware of how those communications may impact humane policies.
Upon exposure of Gross’s hidden email activity by this column, he wrote to Brenda Barnette, the former GM of LAAS, “my days may be numbered,” presumably referring to being kept in his role on the commission.
So far, Bass has remained silent on Gross.
Last year, Gross filed a defamation lawsuit against Joy Freiberg, a deeply respected animal rescuer and humane advocate who has witnessed and spoken out about LAAS atrocities and deceptions during Gross’s tenure.
Enter Paul Nicholas Boylan
Paul Nicholas Boylan is an award-winning First Amendment attorney, international lecturer, professor of law and a recognized expert in defamation law. For disclosure, he has also been an invaluable asset to this column as an expert on public records requests that enable journalists like myself to get to the core of government corruption, failure and waste.
Boylan represents Joy Freiberg in this matter.
The case, to say the least, has been a wild one, in which a default judgment that had been entered in Gross’s favor was vacated when the bizarre circumstances of how the lawsuit was allegedly served were presented to the court.
In a Los Angeles courtroom tomorrow, a hearing will be held on Boylan’s special motion to strike, or dismiss, Gross’s lawsuit, for myriad reasons detailed in court filings, ranging from Freiberg’s free speech rights on a matter of great public interest (cruelty, corruption and death at LAAS) to potential defects in Gross’s lawsuit itself, which could not be amended once Boylan’s anti-SLAPP motion was filed.
“Ms. Freiberg and Mr. Gross are engaged in a long-standing tradition of American democracy involving robust public debate that always involves dramatic statements,” Professor Boylan told me. “As a public official, Mr. Gross automatically has equal, if not superior, access to public media to ‘set the record straight,’ or not,” he continued.
“But choosing not to engage in a public debate on the topic of Mr. Gross' performance as a public official, and then filing a defamation lawsuit against your critic, is exactly what California's anti-SLAPP statute was designed to prevent, and that statute must be interpreted broadly to prevent exactly this sort of thing from happening.” Boylan said. “If not, then there is no doubt that public debate will be chilled.”
If Boylan prevails, Gross will be exposed to mandatory legal fees and costs.
Gross did not respond to an interview request.
(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a multi-award-winning journalist. In June ‘23, he won the LA Press Club’s “Online Journalist of the Year” and “Best Activism Journalism” awards. He has been City Editor for the Mayor Sam network, and a featured contributor for CityWatchLA, KFI AM-640, iHeartMedia, 790-KABC, Cumulus Media, KCRW 89.9 FM, KRLA 870 AM, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal, Pasadena Star-News, Los Angeles Downtown News and the Los Angeles Times in its sports, opinion, entertainment and Sunday Magazine sections among other publishers.)