Our amazing client, Brendane Tynes, PhD., a queer Black feminist scholar, was sued by a man she knew from her Columbia grad program who she had reported to the school for stalking her. She discovered the lawsuit by happenstance when she googled her name – he’d not even served her! The lawsuit was based entirely on her comments to a tweet about him.
We filed an anti-SLAPP to get the case thrown out because Dr. Tynes’s speech was just exercising her First Amendment rights. To our shock, we lost in trial court. Of course, we appealed!
Partner Laura Hecht-Felella, the lead attorney on the case and responsible for many of our recent anti-SLAPP successes, planned to argue the case at Division One. But first, she had to make a deal with her baby to not arrive early! Nine months pregnant, Laura, did a knock-out argument. On March 17, 2026, NY State Appellate Division One reversed the trial court’s decision! Little baby George (8 lbs. 10 oz.) was on his mama’s lap, 17 days old, when she got the decision! The harassing lawsuit against Dr. Tynes was fully dismissed!
Our client’s tweets were clearly protected speech. As the decision says:
Read in context, defendant’s tweets were emotionally charged reactions written in Twitter’s vernacular and accompanied by rhetoric, signaling they were nonactionable opinions.
We’ve handled dozens of defamation suits brought by predators who were mad they were exposed for the heinous things they did. We’ve seen an increase in retaliatory defamation suits filed against survivors since the #MeToo movement empowered survivors to speak out. As of March 2026, around 40 states have anti-SLAPP laws, which can be a useful tool for survivors being sued.
As Laura told Law.com:
This lawsuit is exactly the kind of case New York’s anti-SLAPP law was meant to address—retaliatory litigation aimed at chilling speech on matters of public concern. We’re pleased the Appellate Division applied the statute as intended and dismissed the complaint because the plaintiff did not meet his burden of establishing a substantial basis for his claims.
Read the decision in Talbert v. Tynes below.
