Varian v. Delfino

Varian v. Delfino
Varian v. Delfino
	Supreme Court of California
Decided 5 March 2006,
Full case name	Varian Medical Systems, Inc. v. Delfino (2005)
Citation(s)	35 Cal.4th 180 25 Cal.Rptr.3d 298
Court membership
Associate Justices	Janice R. Brown

Varian Medical Systems, Inc. v. Delfino,

causes of action

affected by the motion...you have a right not to be dragged through the courts because you exercised your constitutional rights."

Facts

In this case involving the arcana of appellate procedure, research scientists Michelangelo Delfino, Ph.D. and Mary E. Day filed an appeal from a $775,000

high-tech corporation headquartered in Gloucester, Massachusetts. The judgment against Delfino and Day included a broad injunction ordering them not to "publish, post, or otherwise disseminate, directly or indirectly, on the Internet or elsewhere" 23 categories of statements that the trial court judge Jack Komar

, and not the jury, found "untrue" and "false and defamatory."

In the fall of 2001 prior to the

trial, Delfino and Day filed a special motion to strike Varian's complaint under California's Anti-SLAPP statute, Code of Civil Procedure section 425.16. The trial court denied the motion and Delfino and Day appealed from that denial, but the trial court and California Courts of Appeal refused to stay the trial under Code of Civil Procedure section 916 while the anti-SLAPP appeal was pending. At the conclusion of a seven-week jury trial the anti-SLAPP appeal was dismissed as moot

.

Ruling

On appeal to the California Sixth District Court of Appeal, in November 2003 a three-judge panel rejected the argument that the trial court lacked subject matter

plaintiffs

' attempts to collect on the judgment and no compensation were ever collected from Delfino and Day.

On 3 March 2005, the Supreme Court held by a 7–0 vote that under Code of Civil Procedure section 916, "all of the matters on trial were embraced in and affected by

in pro per

, the case settled amicably and more than seven years of remarkably acrimonious litigation ended.

Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP

failed to receive any amicus support.