Action Apartment Ass'n v. City of Santa Monica, 41 Cal. 4th 1232 (2007)

Citation: Action Apartment Ass'n v. City of Santa Monica, 41 Cal. 4th 1232 (2007)
Parent Document: Action Apartment Ass'n v. City of Santa Monica, 41 Cal. 4th 1232 (2007)
Jurisdiction: California (state)
Effective Date: 2007-08-02
Original Source: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/5608052/action-apartment-assn-v-city-of... ↗

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CORRIGAN, J., Dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from the opinion of my colleagues. There is no conflict between the litigation privilege and the City of Santa Monica’s “Tenant Harassment” ordinance. Had the city attempted to create some version of a privilege at odds with Civil Code section 47, subdivision (b), that law would have been preempted. But the ordinance before us does not interfere with the operation of the litigation privilege. It is not “inimical” to the privilege in the relevant sense; it “does not prohibit what the statute commands or command what it prohibits.” (Sherwin-Williams Co. v. City of Los Angeles (1993) 4 Cal.4th 893, 902 [16 Cal.Rptr.2d 215, 844 P.2d 534].) Landlords are free to raise the litigation privilege in actions brought under the ordinance, and in such cases the scope of the defense could properly be explored and established. The majority, however, wields the defense not as the shield it was intended to be but as a sword against the legislative authority of local government. Doing so, it distorts both the doctrine of preemption and the privilege itself.

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