Decided August 18, 2022

Serova v. Sony Music Entertainment, S260736

The California Supreme Court held yesterday that a seller’s promotional statements about an artistic work of interest to the public amounted to commercial speech, regardless of whether the seller knew of the statements’ falsity.

Background: The plaintiff sued Sony under the Unfair Competition Law (UCL) and Consumers Legal Remedies Act (CLRA) on the theory that promotional materials for a posthumous Michael Jackson album misrepresented that Jackson was the lead singer. Sony filed a motion to strike under California’s anti-SLAPP statute, arguing that the plaintiff’s UCL and CLRA claims were unlikely to succeed because those statutes target only commercial speech, not noncommercial speech about art protected by the First Amendment.

The Court of Appeal held that the motion should be granted because the plaintiff’s claims targeted protected speech that was immune from suit under the UCL and CLRA. It reasoned that the promotional statements about the album related to a public issue—the controversy over whether Jackson was the lead singer on the album—and were more than just commercial speech because they were connected to music. The plaintiff’s allegation that the statements were false did not strip them of First Amendment protection, according to the Court of Appeal, because Sony didn’t know the statements were false.

Issues: Were Sony’s representations that Michael Jackson was the lead singer on Michael...

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