Judge Donald Cosby of the 67th State District Court in Fort Worth has ordered ViaView, Inc., CEO James McGibney and the corporation he heads to pay Hanszen Laporte client Neal Rauhauser $300,000 in attorney’s fees and $1 million in penalties called “sanctions” for filing a groundless defamation suit. The order was handed down under the Texas Citizens Participation Act of 2011, or “anti-SLAPP” law. It is the largest sanction awarded by any Texas court so far under the four-year-old law, and is also believed to be the largest anti-SLAPP sanction a judge has awarded in any of the 29 U.S. states that have a version of the law. The court also ordered McGibney and ViaView to publish written apologies to Rauhauser on their websites “for 365 days.”

The court found that McGibney and ViaView brought their suits “in conscious disregard” of Rauhauser’s rights and “without just cause or excuse.” The court also found that Rauhauser attorney Jeffrey L. Dorrell’s “meticulous briefing” and “extremely high degree of skill” in the complex area of First Amendment law justified the $300,000 in attorney’s fees awarded.

SLAPP is an acronym for “Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation,” and refers to lawsuits brought to chill the exercise of free speech and other constitutional rights. Sanctions are mandatory under the Texas law, and are intended to be “sufficient to deter the filing of similar suits.”

“This was an outrageous example of lawsuit abuse,” said Dorrell. Court papers show that McGibney filed multiple lawsuits simultaneously in Texas and California based on the same facts.

“These lawsuits were clearly intended to chill Rauhauser’s right of free speech,” Dorrell added. “The court’s dramatic order sends a strong message to others who would harass their critics with baseless litigation,” said Dorrell.

Hanszen Laporte is an AV rated law firm whose litigation partners are all board certified in civil trial law—a distinction achieved by less than .2% of all of Texas’ 70,000 attorneys.