Joseph R. Mullins v. Joseph E. Corcoran, et al.

The First Amendment right “to petition extends to all departments of the Government,” and “[t]he right of access to the courts is . . . but one aspect of the right of petition.” California Motor Transp. Co. v. Trucking Unlimited, 404 U.S. 508, 510 (1972). The right does not protect “sham” litigation, or “ostensible petitioning activity that is in fact an attempt to interfere directly with the business relationships of a competitor.” E. R.R. Presidents Conference v. Noerr Motor Freight, Inc., 365 U.S. 127, 144 (1961). To be a sham, litigation must be both objectively and subjectively baseless. Prof ’l Real Estate Inv’rs, Inc. v. Columbia Pictures Indus., Inc., 508 U.S. 49, 60 (1993). After twelve days of trial and consideration of hundreds of exhibits, a Massachusetts Superior Court judge awarded $17.5 million in damages against Joseph R. Mullins for filing a suit seeking to enjoin majority shareholders of a closely held corporation from pursuing a real-estate project on terms Mullins alleged (and the court later ruled) violated his rights as a minority shareholder. App. 13–14. The damages award was based on the court’s findings that the suit had stopped the project from proceeding and had been brought in bad faith by Mullins. In other words, the court treated Mullins’s suit as a sham based solely upon its determination of Mullins’s subjective intent and without any consideration of whether the suit was objectively baseless. The question presented is: Whether, under the First Amendment, a court may award damages against a party for the act of filing suit in a commercial dispute without finding that the suit was both objectively and subjectively baseless?