They want. Sure. Im head of federal public policy. You you have not heard of it before, website that thats people to businesses in places. Currently currently about a hundred and 42 million unique monthly visitors and 32 countries start 11 years ago. And as a part of that process connecting people it has also become a site for aggregating and assigning ratings. So for example we are here in washington dc right now. I think that the rayburn cafeteria has about a two star rating on yelp. Yeah. So whether it is restaurants or dry cleaners or plumbers or businesses in general or places in general they have a yelp page generally speaking and ratings that are there. And and it does not just apply for yelp. You have sites like trip advisor for travel and hotels and things around the world. You have a sock stock a site that has come up for doctors and finding out the best doctors the mighty around you. Google does it as well. Even facebook as well. If you go on to a business page you will see ratings for businesses, and people leave opinions. So really the rise of social media platforms and the internet there has also been the rise of the review culture that yelp has been of the front of which is where individuals have had the ability and opportunity to share their opinion, to share their factbased experience with the particular business or particular place and they do it really for the greater sort of community service, for the good. Why do i go i go on to yelp and rate a particular business . Its not because im receiving compensation but because i want to let everyone else on the internet, my neighbors and others know the experience that i have their. In the past you might ask a neighbor, ask your friend, use wordofmouth, use wordofmouth, means of figuring out what is the best of what is around you. Now thankfully we have the internet so we can get this broader more ire it experience out of it and to make better purchasing decisions or just make better decisions in general. But along with that obviously when you have a platform and the internet in general which is really this bastion of free speech where you can go and sort of express your opinions and the First Amendment or under just in general but is protected by the First Amendment you are occasionally going to have the circumstances at times where people will not necessarily tell the truth. It might not be a fast paced experience, but in general under those circumstances platforms like yelp, trip advisor, amazon, so amazon, so many others already have within their terms of Service Mechanisms and tools that allow those type of statements and reviews to either be flagged or for Business Owners to respond. Really the way that the platform works it helps to ensure especially in the case of yelp that it is an honest firsthand experience now, a lot of people might think also that review platforms are places where people kind of go to complain to my go to just leave a bad experience. But at least in the case of yelp we have found that about 75 percent or so are actually three stars and above. So you know you might think in your head going to go there and really didnt have business that didnt give me good service, but often times is people that are going just to share their experience with the greater internet society. So i i say all that because you do at times unfortunately have instances where Business Owners or individuals have not agreed with the statements that have been made. It was mentioned from the standpoint of the city paper. Well look at the internet platforms as basically obviously online digital media. The continuation. And unfortunately my some Business Owners have decided to go the route where individuals have decided to go the route by threatening or attempting to sue people based off of whether its a yelp review or trip advisor review or sock stock opinion and the fact of the matter is that most of the time these are individuals firsthand experiences or opinions. I went here. I experienced this. Maybe it was a bad experience. You say it was a a bad experience but generally is still your firsthand opinion unfortunately you have this group of individuals that sometimes decides to use litigation as a response rather than actually trying to engage and better customer service. That is what we sort of saw happening. It has continued to happen. And what we worry about obviously and why we have been a big supporter of anti legislation is that while we know and as kevin said before, most of these lawsuits, the people that are out there trying for to threatening to sue or are Going Forward and suing someone and falling under this mental, they dont necessarily expected to go to trial. They dont even necessarily expect to win. With the hope with the hope is that you would rather remove your review and never speak either ill or anything at all about that company again rather than a spend thousands of dollars of the tens of thousands of dollars to actually defend your statement in court. You might think about man, is my review of the cafeteria really worth maybe its not a good case because its a government owned entity. But, you know if we were talking about was a good 18th st. Lounge. My review of 18th street lounge worth you know, potentially thousands of dollars in litigation and defending it . Unfortunately most people most of the time if you are an average citizen i just decided to share that opinion will say no has probably not. I would i would rather take it down and have to go through that process. And one community obviously feel that is wrong because you have the right to share the opinion. Youre opinion. Youre honest, factbased opinion commanded is protected by the First Amendment. That is the first. And then we also are concerned about the overall effect because even if it does not is not you if you are not the one experiencing that suit or threat directly, you tell your friends about it, say to someone else i got threatened with a lawsuit based off of my review of restaurant. Then it poisons the internet ecosystem as a whole. You know we all look at the internet as really being this bastion of freedom of speech where you can go and share your opinion share your you know, experiences. And so we in particular worry about slap suits really infringing upon your ability and that experience clicks actually its funny. Hard to mike to mike especially since you have not been able to speak yet but we talked a lot about people whom i stop i stop and think before they Say Something in the fact that anti slap helps you continue with that thought. But what about the times you dont even stop to think . How many of you dont actually have to show hand, hand not your hand silently so angry at something that you joined a twitter and grant. You dont even think. My flight was delayed again. You suck, insert airline name here. Your Cable Company your guy was supposed to be here five, six. You know youve done it. You you know youve done it. You have all done it, and you have not even thought. Probably protected. A lot of the stuff is protected. It is not the plan majority. The probably not going to sue you, what if they did . I. I jenny rest mucin here representing the American Association for justice. Some justice. Some of you probably know it but if you dont we are the Worlds Largest trial bar formed in 1947. We are committed to ensuring that committed to ensuring all people individuals, consumers families, patients coworkers have access to all reports in order to enforce the rights. So are talking about slabs and how to define a slap i agree with i agree with much of what theyre saying. I want to highlight two points that i think you should think about because this is important. One cop meritless lawsuit. The person bringing person bringing them has no expectation that they will win in court every they are bringing it to bully and harassment silence. And that is wrong. Youll have a right a right to bring frivolous things in a court of law. Second is that usually except but larger media defendants usually there is a disparity and resources between the two parties. The person bringing the slap as tremendous resources. They can make frivolous filings in a court of law because they can pay for them. Whereas the them. Whereas the david in the situation, the smaller litigant that is a serious economic threat to them. Those two points are important, and i stress them because and how we define a slap lawsuit those two points get lost. I am here today. I will be presenting an opposing view on a a bill that was introduced, the speaks react because i disagree that there is concern and something should be addressed but i but i disagree with the way the slap is defined. We have serious concerns that as it is defined broadly it will be applied to lawsuits that you do not intended to apply to. Such cases as whistleblower whistleblower law or civil rights lawsuits or security lawsuits a lot of lawsuits that arise out of statements that are by nobodys imagination something you would consider a slap lawsuit. Thats a great segue to talking about the state of legislation. We have 28 states and washington and a territory or two that have their own anti slap legislation but they are different in each state. State. Some of them are broad and some are quite narrow. And then and then we have this new federal legislation which we have had in the past. I would like to here from the panelists how this is different from passed legislation them how it differs from the state legislation, what is the purpose of introducing at the federal level. Goahead. I will start off a little bit. From our from our standpoint there is the need for federal anti slap legislation because given the sort of nature of the internet in general you can often times have circumstances where you have parties in different jurisdictions. That is often obviously something that would necessitate itself more to the federal side rather than the state. And also because of the differences in the nature of the state laws that are in place. 20 as you mentioned 28 states with an antislap on the books. Some are really the books. Some are really good like the state of california. The state of texas. They have really good antislap law, and i believe that the speaks react itself was actually modeled on those two pieces of legislation. Then you have states like new york state that does not have a very good anti slap law relatively narrow in scope. The same in pennsylvania. What you sometimes end up have happening there is form shopping. Basically if you are a party looking to sue someone make a slap motion based off of yakima make a slap motion you look to see either if you can find a state without an antislap law or one that has a relatively weak one. And so from a yelp standpoint in particular when youre looking at statements made on the internet having a federal standard at least baseline standard for when it comes the First Amendment antislap protection we think is crucial to ensuring that the speech and statements you make online are protected. Just to pick up on a a couple points, and one more example of a state law that has recently been change that is narrow in florida which only applies to lawsuits brought by government officials against a private individual which has been broadened to give more protection you have other states out there. You mentioned stronger and weaker and maryland has a week a week anti slap law. Virginia has none. Dc has one that has recently been held to not apply when youre in a federal court proceeding. You have this big gap. I am a defendant to read dan snyder decides to sue is a resident of virginia and do it in federal court because its not just dc. Now that the federal court cannot apply the antislap anti slap law there is a huge loophole undercutting state law. That is why we need this legislation to fill in the other states that dont have them and also fill in the protections that exist in some states. This is actually relevant in our case. The suit was initially filed in new york which as you heard did not have as good a law as dc for anti slap. And in the case was moved to dc. I felt much more like i had a club in my hand when the suit was moved to dc because there was an anti slap law here to help protect against these frivolous lawsuits. We talk about what the states are doing mina 28 states that have some kind of slap law. They all very and that echoes the. That there is not consensus on how to define a a slap lawsuit. Some are very narrow like pennsylvania that only applies to environmental issues. Some are quite broad. But even california has this language in the statute that it must be an expression made in furtherance of your constitutional right to potential. Any kind of change. Something that i think is really extraordinary. The speaks react has to have a removal provision term of statebased claims filed in state court. He when there is not diversity jurisdiction. So its one thing to have a rule to apply to this diversity of citizenship. Its quite another to tell states where taking these cases out of your state court and putting them in federal court. Our constitution is based on a system of a system of federalism. Our framers not specifically authorize things they left for the state. All these dates have different slap statutes. Some have decided to not slap slap, some have ruled them to be unconstitutional. Others have tried to dressed very narrow statutes. What happens if you pass this big broad federal bill that removes cases the federal court . They are effectively preempted because you can remove them to federal court there is. Theres no longer a statute that applies to them. So that is very troubling to us. The issue of tort law, and all law and also the case with you here medical malpractice, defamation all exists because of state law. There law. There is no federal tort law. At the state cause of action the speaks react to changes that because its something that belongs in federal court. In addition what i want to say is and then i want to jump in for a minute. Yeah. Others this problem. When you look at what states are doing what they have decided to do including the states that have ruled it to be unconstitutional what are the unintended consequences of putting abroad, federal bill that cramps all of those . That is where our organization comes in. There are significant concerns that the bill will apply to the cases i just listed of individuals, not the goliath bringing first 25 frivolous lawsuits but the david who is going after the goliath in a whistleblower action employment discrimination action action, those kind of cases are the ones we want to help protect. I know. A lot of people probably want to comment. Great. Yeah. Great. Yeah. I will jump in and response. I think that we fundamentally differ already in regard to she described it as being overly broad. There are specific exemptions that are already within the bill and particular limitations whether dealing with commercial parties dealing with statements that are made about governmental actors, statements that involve state or federal and then also those that are made about environmental and other areas. The bill itself is really we think, narrowly tailored in the scope and regard to the conversation. Obviously conversation. Obviously when youre talking about the question of what is a slap suit there are a lot of things that could be deemed or considered slap suits, but that is because it ultimately comes back to one particular area that we have been talking about the constitution and your First Amendment right to speak and to be protected in regard to what you say. If youre making a factbased statement if you are sharing your opinion in a manner that is not defamatory you know, im not going to go down the road of what is defamation because its pretty clear on the federal level and the states what the standard of defamation is. What we are talking about here is whether or not if youre in an area that does not have an uptodate law on the books because really it is just the fact that antislap law in general is not kept pace with the speed of the internet, how far along we are in regard to how communication happens how people express their opinion online and in many instances state laws of not caught up. Even within those 28 states there are differences. The other 22 states the real question is that, you know how we are not talking about all of those claims being immediately moved to federal court and being on the onus of federal judges. It would allow for removal. Basically say, youre in california. California has a great antislap a great anti slap law. Why would you bother filing a claim in federal court in that instance if its a state based matter . But if you are in arkansas where there is not an antislap law that you are being hit with something that is on its face a slap suit then this then this would allow for the opportunity of removal with the answer that question. Question. If its something that going through and looking at it when you file your pleading and you say what has happened and you know, as a defendant you make this motion and a very expedited process you can figure out, okay this is a slap a slap suit. A judge can figure that out and throw it out or at least on that. And then because of the fact that a slap suit was filed against you and you have had to spend thousands of dollars if not tens of thousands of dollars attorneys fees then at least, you know, have the other party pay that off or provide some sort of compensation so that you are not left with your speech having been threatened, with your time having been taken away and the tens of thousands of dollars in attorneys fees afterward. That is why we feel that this is really important and why in particular we support this and dont think that it is overly broad. We think that when you were talking about what a slap suit is basically a meritless lawsuit that infringes upon your First Amendment right to free speech, the fact of the matter is a lot of speech happens on the internet. Dont get me wrong but it should receive the same protection as somewhat someone like amy received or the city paper received because what they did was in print. I would like to followup on that was something i dont think we have been clear on the effect of the special motion to dismiss. It is not we have, you know we need to be clear. It is not as simple as im the defendant. Ive been served with what i believe is a frivolous lawsuit and i file my i file my motion to dismiss and this goes away. If i can show specifically the bill allows me as the defendant to file a special motion in this mess if i have made an oral or written statement or other expression in connection with an official proceeding or about a matter of public concern and there are certain exemptions. That exemptions. That is similar to the California Law where you talked about a statement made in furthering the rights