"Court of Appeal Throws Out Abuse-of-Process Suit Against Local Attorney Morse Mehrban "

"A suit charging a well-known local attorney with malicious prosecution and abuse of process has been thrown out by the Court of Appeal under the anti-SLAPP law.

The action against Morse Mehrban arose from protected activity—bringing a lawsuit—so the burden was on the plaintiff to show a likelihood of prevailing, Justice Richard Mosk wrote for Div. Five.

Plaintiff JSJ Limited Partnership failed to meet that burden, the jurist concluded, because the abuse-of-process claim is barred by the litigation privilege and the malicious prosecution claim could not succeed  because JSJ’s success in the underlying suit was not on the merits.
JSJ sued Mehrban after the attorney—a prolific litigator of disability access cases, “bounty hunter” actions under the toxic torts initiative Proposition 65, and private attorney general suits under the Unfair Competition Law, before they were largely eliminated by the passage of Proposition 64 in 2004—sued the company twice for disability access violations.

Both suits were brought on behalf of the same client, a disabled man named Alfredo Garcia. In 2008, Garcia claimed that when he patronized—on multiple occasions—a restaurant located on property owned by JSJ, he was unable to use the paper towel and toilet seat cover dispensers in the restroom because they were too high off the ground. He also claimed he could not use the toilet because it lacked the proper support bars.

The case was tried without a jury, and the judge ruled for the defendant.

In 2009, Mehrban again sued on Garcia’s behalf, claiming that JSJ failed to provide a suitable van-accessible handicap parking spot in the restaurant’s lot. The defense demurred, claiming that res judicata barred the second action."

Source
http://www.metnews.com/articles/2012/jsj052112.htm