Dalvin Cook was an NFL player for the Minnesota Vikings. An altercation that took place in 2020 resulted in a personal injury lawsuit against Cook by Daniel Cragg and Anne St. Amant on behalf of Gracelyn Trimble (who was apparently injured in the altercation) in the Dakota County District Court in Minnesota. Cook and Trimble settled that action in 2024.
Meanwhile, back in 2021, Cook sued Cragg, St. Amant and their law firm, Eckland & Blando, LLP, in Hennepin County, Minnesota, claiming that they defamed him. Cook alleged that the defendants in this defamation suit had provided to the media an unfiled and unserved complaint which painted Cook as having done serious physical injury to Trimble. Cook also alleged that defamatory statements about him were made public record by the defendants filing an unsealed memorandum as part of the supposedly confidential settlement negotiations between the parties (this latter filing apparently resulted in defendants being sanctioned by the trial court, which sanctions were later affirmed on appeal).
This Hennepin County litigation percolated for several years with the defendants filing motions and Cook filing amended complaints to avoid dismissal. Eventually, Cook filed his Third Amended Complaint which added certain claims.
Now enters our deus ex machina. In 2024, Minnesota adopted the Uniform Public Expression Protection Act (“UPEPA”) as its Anti-SLAPP law. With the UPEPA newly available, the defendant then brought a UPEPA special motion to dismiss Cook’s lawsuit. The Hennepin County judge overruled the special motion and the defendants appealed. All of this resulted in the opinion in Cook v. Trimble, 2025 WL 1287932 (Minn.App., May 5, 2025), which, as far as I am aware, is the first Minnesota opinion to consider the Minnesota UPEPA.
The Minnesota Court of Appeals first noted that appeals of UPEPA motions are subject to de novo review, which basically means that the Court of Appeals takes a fresh look at everything without giving deference to the trial court’s ruling (as opposed to an abuse of discretion review where substantial deference is given). Here, that meant the Court of Appeals would take a fresh look at the merits of the defendants’ UPEPA special motion.
The Court of Appeals then noted that Minnesota recognizes a judicial-proceedings privilege. Under this privilege, a statement is protected from defamation claims if it was made by a judicial officer or one of the parties or their counsel, are made within the judicial proceeding, and the statement is relevant to the subject matter of the litigation.
The problem for the defendants was that their 2021 media statements were not made in court or otherwise within the judicial proceeding of the Hennepin County action. Thus, the media statements did not fall within the protection of the judicial-proceedings privilege. Or, to look at it another way, media statements are fair game for defamation actions.
On the other hand, the judicial-proceedings privilege would protect the statements made in the unsealed memorandum that was filed with the Hennepin County court. All the elements of that privilege were satisfied, and even if Cook didn’t like the way that memorandum was unveiled to the public ― and the court didn’t either since defendants were apparently sanctioned for that ― the privilege still attached to the memorandum and its contents and thus was protected speech. The result was that Cook’s defamation claims as to the memorandum should have been dismissed under the UPEPA special motion because of the judicial-proceedings privilege.
Going back to the media statements, while they were not privileged, that did not ipso facto mean that Cook had a good case for defamation against the defendants. To survive dismissal, Cook had to come forth with clear and convincing evidence that the defendants acted with malice in making the media statements. Reviewing Cook’s evidence, however, the Court of Appeals found that he had not met that burden. Because Cook could not meet the malice requirement of the defamation claim, he could not make out a prima facie (at least miminal) case for defamation against the defendants. Thus, this claim should have been dismissed on the UPEPA special motion as well.
Cook had a final claim which was for invasion of privacy based on the statements. This claim was based on statements made by the defendants about Cook which were claimed to be both highly offensive to a reasonable person and not of legitimate concern to the public. The Court of Appeals held that Cook had made out a prima facie case for invasion of privacy and thus it was proper that the UPEPA special motion was not granted as to this claim.
Thus, the end result was that the Court of Appeals reversed the Hennpin County court as to the media statements and the memorandum, holding that the UPEPA special motion should have been granted as to those claims. Yet, the Court of Appeals also affirmed the denial of the UPEPA special motion as to Cook’s invasion of privacy claim and remanded the case back to the Hennipin County court for further litigation on that claim.
ANALYSIS
Not only is this the first UPEPA appellate opinion for Minnesota, but it also presents a good example of how the UPEPA special motion works.
The first inquiry was whether Cook’s cause of action fell within the scope of the UPEPA. Because Cook was complaining of the defendants’ speech (the media statements) and petition activity (the filing of the memorandum), the action fell within the scope of the UPEPA’s protections for freedom of speech and to petition. This inquiry was thus satisfied in the affirmative.
The second inquiry was whether Cook could establish a prima facie case against the defendants that would survive summary judgment even in the face of the defendants’ rights to free speech and to petition. As to the memorandum, Cook could not overcome the protections for petitioning activity (the judicial-proceedings privilege) and so Cook failed on this point and the UPEPA special motion should have been granted as to the memorandum. As to the media statements, Cook could not offer adequate proof of one element ― malice ― and so could not make out a prima facie case for defamation as to the media statements. The UPEPA special motion thus should have been granted as to Cook’s defamation claims as well. However, Cook could make out a prima facie case on his invasion of privacy claim and so the UPEPA special motion was properly denied as to that claim.
This is exactly how the UPEPA was designed to operate and it did so with so with flying colors in this case. But the UPEPA also correctly operated in two other ways that deserve examination.
It will be recalled that the UPEPA special motion was originally denied by the Hennepin County judge. If this had been an ordinary motion to dismiss, it would have meant that the defendants would have to suffer through the expense and emotional angst of having to suffer through the litigation as to the media statements and memorandum only to see those claims dismissed in the end anyway. The UPEPA special motion, however, created a right for the defendants to immediately launch an appeal of right to the Minnesota Court of Appeals which then corrected the Hennepin County judge’s ruling and cut down Cook’s claims to only his single viable claim, which was the invasion of privacy claim. The importance of this immediate appeal of right provided by the UPEPA to a losing UPEPA movant is thus illustrated.
The final important UPEPA provision which came into play in this case was that of uniformity of interpretation. As Minnesota’s first UPEPA case, the Court of Appeals had no guidance from previous court opinions. The uniformity provision allowed the Court of Appeals to look to the decisions of other states which have adopted the UPEPA to help determine how the UPEPA was to correctly be applied. This is the great benefit of uniformity and it should not be underestimated.
Anyway, Minnesota has now started down its path to protecting the free speech and related rights through the UPEPA. And that’s a good thing.
Read the full article here