James Cairns is a former Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officer. In August 2018, Cairns and his partner were in a car accident while on duty. Cairns was injured and took medical leave.
In October 2019, the Special Operations Division notified Cairns that he was under investigation for workers’ compensation fraud. While the investigation did not uncover workers’ compensation fraud, it found that Cairns had engaged in six other types of misconduct.

The misconduct concerned Cairns’s romantic relationship with a convicted felon, which he carried out while on and off duty; Cairns’s use of the LAPD’s computer system to inquire about this individual; and an incident of unauthorized travel. Based on the results of the workers’ compensation fraud investigation, the LAPD ordered a supplemental investigation.

The investigations concluded Cairns had engaged in inappropriate behavior with a convicted felon while on duty, showing poor judgment. In July 2020, after several levels of administrative review, the LAPD determined it would pursue a Board of Rights hearing with a recommendation of termination. In August 2020, the LAPD filed Board of Rights charges.

In July 2021, Cairns filed a civil action against the City, the LAPD, the County of Los Angeles, and several individuals.

After a six-day hearing held in October 2021, November 2021, and January 2022, the Board of Rights recommended Cairns’s termination. Cairns resigned in lieu of termination.

In September 2022, Cairns filed his second amended complaint (SAC) against the City. The SAC asserts eight causes of action. The general gist of the 68-page SAC is that LAPD supervisors harassed, discriminated, and retaliated against Cairns based on race or for other reasons and, after the 2018 accident, when he failed to return to work because of his injuries and resulting disability. The SAC repeatedly alleges that the investigations themselves constituted retaliation and harassment. There are also allegations relating to LAPD’s surveillance of Cairns as part of the investigations.

Cairns “appears” to allege the workers’ compensation investigation, and statements made during the investigation, were acts of disability or race-based discrimination or harassment. For example, in the context of describing the messages asking when he would return to work, the SAC alleges that Cairns’s supervisors also “threatened [him] with prosecution or discipline” for workers’ compensation fraud. The harassment cause of action later alleges that while on leave, Cairns received persistent “threats from his superiors, or those that they directed,” and when he complained, was subjected to a “biased investigation that presented false statements . . . .”

The City filed a special motion to strike Cairns’s complaint pursuant to California’s anti-SLAPP statute (Code Civ. Proc., § 425.16), which the trial court partially granted.

The Court of Appeal reversed in the unpublished case of Cairns v. City of Los Angeles CA2/3 – B331127 (April 2025). It concluded that the court’s order did not strike claims consistent with California Supreme Court guidance regarding mixed causes of action.

Conduct protected by the anti-SLAPP statute includes, as relevant here, “any written or oral statement or writing made before a legislative, executive, or judicial proceeding, or any other official proceeding authorized by law” and “any written or oral statement or writing made in connection with an issue under consideration or review by a legislative, executive, or judicial body, or any other official proceeding authorized by law.” (§ 425.16, subd. (e)(1) & (2).)

Relying on Park v. Nazari (2023) 93 Cal.App.5th 1099 (Nazari), Cairns contends the trial court erred because the City moved only to strike the entire SAC, yet the court granted the motion in part rather than denying it in its entirety.

A claim arises from protected activity “when that activity underlies or forms the basis for the claim.” (Park, supra, 2 Cal.5th at p. 1062.) In some cases, a cause of action is “ ‘ “mixed,” ’ ” such that it “rests on allegations of multiple acts, some of which constitute protected activity and some of which do not.”

In Baral v. Schnitt (2016) 1 Cal.5th 376, 393 (Baral), the California Supreme Court held that “an anti-SLAPP motion, like a conventional motion to strike, may be used to attack parts of a count as pleaded.” Within a single cause of action, “allegations of protected activity that are asserted as grounds for relief” may be stricken unless the plaintiff shows a probability of prevailing. (Id. at p. 395, italics omitted; see id. at p. 393.)

The “trial court correctly determined that the SAC’s allegations relating to the internal investigations and Board of Rights proceeding could potentially constitute protected conduct.” However “specificity in striking only a portion of a mixed cause of action is required.”

“The SAC in this matter is a sprawling document that resists easy categorization. While some of the SAC’s allegations relating to the investigations and Board of Rights proceeding concern oral or written statements, some do not. …. For example, the SAC alleges the workers’ compensation investigation “was a retaliatory attempt” to terminate him. … These allegations do not appear to concern written or oral statements or writings.”

“Under these circumstances, the trial court’s ultimate order purporting to strike “only the allegations as to [Cairns] suffering the adverse employment action of a sham or unfair investigation and [Board of Rights] hearing” did not sufficiently distinguish between protected and unprotected activity. The order was not limited to claims based on written or oral communications. Further, it did not identify which allegations remained because they challenged the investigations themselves, or the decision that flowed from the Board of Rights hearing, and those which were stricken because they were based on protected written or oral statements.”

“It may be that, if carefully parsed, the SAC’s claims arising from the internal investigations and Board of Rights hearing could have been separated into claims based on protected speech and properly subject to anti-SLAPP protection, and those reflecting only unprotected activity.”