Former lawyer ordered to pay fees in First Amendment case

MCALLEN — In what some believe is a first for Hidalgo County, a judge last week ordered a former attorney to pay the legal fees of The Monitor and its parent corporation in a case stemming from a defamation lawsuit.

State District Judge Luis Singleterry, of the 92nd District Court, last week ordered former attorney Mark Cantu to pay $120,842 in legal fees to AIM Media Texas, the owners of The Monitor, under provisions of a state law that was enacted to protect First Amendment rights by discouraging frivolous lawsuits. It’s known as anti-SLAPP legislation or Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation.

Austin attorney Laura Prather, who was instrumental in the 2011 law’s passage, said it shields First Amendment rights from lawsuits aimed at stymieing free speech with expensive attorney fees and exhaustive legal proceedings.

John Bussian, AIM Media Texas’ North Carolina-based attorney, believes the order, signed last Tuesday, upholds the spirit in which the law was passed.

“This award fulfills the vision of the Texas legislators who passed the anti-SLAPP law,” Bussian said.

Cantu, who was disbarred from practicing law in an unrelated case, had sued AIM Media; The Monitor and its editor; its sister newspaper, the Valley Morning Star and its former editor; and a former Star reporter, Emma Pérez-Treviño, for defamation.

Treviño had written a story about a critical ruling made against Cantu by the Texas Supreme Court. The story appeared in The Monitor and Valley Morning Star.

Both Bussian and Prather believe it may be the first Hidalgo County case of attorney fees and court costs being awarded to a news organization under the anti-SLAPP provision.

“…The law is designed to curb civil suits to recover money from The Monitor, The Star, their editors and reporters, and all those simply exercising their constitutional right to publish and broadcast accurately about government generally and the operation of the courts, in particular,” Bussian said.

According to Prather — a partner at Austin-based law firm Haynes and Boone — Singleterry’s order is especially noteworthy considering how uncommon such decisions are in the Valley.

“The perception generally is that courts in the Valley are less inclined to award attorney’s fees to defendants in lawsuits, and this is possibly the first case in which a Hidalgo County court has done so,” said Prather. “People shouldn’t be filing meritless lawsuits against the media or others for exercising their constitutional right to free speech, and if they do, they could be subjected to making the recipient of their lawsuit whole by reimbursing them their legal fees.”

Bussian said the 13th Court of Appeals had dismissed Cantu’s lawsuit and ordered Singleterry to reconsider a motion to award attorney’s fees.

“This was the first time the Court of Appeals dismissed a libel suit on its own since it did so in Mayor Othal Brand’s libel suit against The Monitor in 1995,” Bussian said. “At that time, the anti-SLAPP law had not been enacted in Texas and no recovery of defense costs was possible.”

Awarding court and attorney fees to defendants in anti-SLAPP cases also helps raise awareness about the law, Prather said.

“They will likely think twice before doing this when they become aware of these decisions,” she added.