Kesler v. Doe [1]

Grant S. Kesler, President and CEO of Metalclad Corporation [2], filed a John Doe suit after comments critical of him and the company appeared on the Yahoo! Finance message board dedicated to Metalclad.  The comments allegedly called into question Mr. Kesler's honesty in connection with a dispute over the company's authorization of a reverse stock split.  Kesler sought to discover the identities of a number of anonymous posters to the forum, including that of one commenter going by the moniker  "Mezzzman." 

Mezzzman moved to strike the complaint based on California's anti-SLAPP statute, Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 425.16 [3], arguing that his comments were a free speech activity and that Kesler could not show a probability of prevailing on his defmation claim.  The trial court disagreed and denied Mezzzman's motion to strike.  Mezzzman appealed, but the parties settled on confidential terms before the appellate court reached a decision.