California Appellate Tracker

Jackson v. Mayweather

April 26, 2017

Although celebrity defendant’s comments about celebrity plaintiff ex-girlfriend’s medical history were matters of public interest and received Anti-SLAPP protection, his posting of a sonogram and medical records on social media was a bridge too far even in the relatively lenient context of celebrity gossip.

Boxer Mayweather’s Facebook postings and a radio interview in which he stated that the plaintiff, his ex-girlfriend, had had an abortion, he had broken up with her for that reason, and she had had plastic surgery were statements in public forums about issues of public interest (CCP 425.16(e)(4)) since the boxer and girlfriend were high profile individuals subject to extensive media scrutiny and the comments qualified as celebrity gossip, an approved category of statements about matters of public interest. Plaintiff failed to show that Mayweather’s statements about her abortion and plastic surgery were false or intruded improperly on her privacy. But Mayweather went too far in posting a sonogram of the twin fetuses prior to the abortion as well as the girlfriend’s medical records. The girlfriend’s invasion of privacy claim based on the sonogram and medical records survived Mayweather’s Anti-SLAPP motion, but the rest of her claims were stricken.

California Court of Appeal, Second District, Division 7 (Perluss, P.J.); March 27, 2017 (modified & published April 19, 2017); 2017 WL 1398779

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Jackson v. Mayweather

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