The complicated years-long legal battle that begun when Dragon Ball Super: Broly voice actor Vic Mignogna filed a series of ill-fated defamation lawsuits against Funimation and two voice actors (and the fiancée of one of the actors) after the company and the actors publicly repeated claims of sexual harassment against Mignogna appears to be nearing the finishing line after Mignogna suffered another legal setback in a Texas Appeals Court on Sep. 29.
Mignogna not only saw all of his defamation lawsuits thrown out of court, but he was then ordered to pay the legal fees of each of the defendants after they all filed countersuits against him for violating Texas' Anti-SLAPP suit act. Mignogna lost his appeals of these decisions in August, and on Sep. 29, he also lost an en banc reconsideration, where the judges determined that the original decision should not be reconsidered. This leaves Mignogna with only the United States Supreme Court as a theoretical last resort for his appeals.
In 2019, Mignogna sued Funimation, the anime dubbing and distribution company that used to employ him, as well as two other voice actors (Monica Rial and Jamie Marchi) and the fiancee of Rial, Ronald Toye, who all made public statements regarding sexual harassment allegations against Mignogna. He accused Funimation, Rial, Marchi and Toye of defamation, tortious interference of existing contracts and tortious interference of business relations. Those lawsuits were all thrown out of court.
However, Funimation, Rial, Marchi and Toye all filed countersuits as part of the Texas Citizens Participation Act (TCPA), which is a Texas state law designed to combat so-called "SLAPP" lawsuits. SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation. It refers to lawsuits designed specifically to silence critics of an individual or an organization by forcing the critics to go to court to defend their actions. SLAPP suits are not typically meant to be won, per se, but rather to keep critics busy with lawyers and court fees and also to intimidate any other critics from stepping forward, for fear that they will be sued as well. A number of states, such as Texas, have come up with specific laws to combat these types of lawsuits.
The court ruled that Mignogna's lawsuits were, in fact, SLAPP suits, and so he was on the hook for over $200,000 in legal fees for Funimation, Rial, Marchi and Toye. In fact, when Mignogna lost his appeal of this decision in August, the court actually noted that the legal fee calculation for Rial and Toye was incorrectly calculated, so Mignogna will possibly owe even more money when the court finally figures out the correct figure.
Mignoga then tried an en banc reconsideration, where a panel of judges determines whether it feels as though the case should be reconsidered, in which case, the original decision will not be made final until an en banc review of the case occurred. Here, the panel determined that no such reconsideration was warranted here.
Judgments accrue interest until they are paid, so the amount that Mignogna will have to pay has only gone up since 2019 (and will continue increasing until he pays it).
Source: Twitter