Two weeks after reviving claims in an underlying case, the Georgia Court of Appeals has tossed a defendant's defamation claim against an attorney for posting an article on his law firm's website about a personal injury lawsuit he filed. The appeals court said Georgia's anti-SLAPP statute barred the lawsuit filed by a woman who was accused of using Snapchat's Speed Filter to take a selfie just before she hit another car and seriously injured its driver in 2015. The Speed Filter is a stylized speedometer superimposed on a picture of the user showing the speed they're traveling at that time. Attorney Michael Neff was among a group of lawyers in 2016 who sued Snapchat and the then-18-year-old driver, Christal McGee, in Spalding County on behalf of the injured driver, Wentworth Maynard, and his wife. Neff also posted a story about the lawsuit and information about the dangers of the Speed Filter to his website and discussed the case with media outlets, including the Daily Report. The allegations against McGee included a claim she was driving more than 100 mph at the time of the wreck. That claim was made by Heather McCarty, a passenger in McGee's car, who said they were traveling 113 mph. Neff's accident reconstructionist estimated their speed at between 91 mph and 107 mph. McGee sued Neff and his firm, The Law Offices of Michael Lawson Neff P.C., in 2017 asserting claims for defamation based on his article, which was also cited by other news outlets. Her complaint, filed by Charlie Gower of Columbus' Charles A. Gower P.C., disputed that McGee was using the Speed Filter at the time of the wreck, or that she was traveling at such a high rate of speed. The lawsuit also said McGee wasn't charged with violating Georgia's “super speeder” law and other offenses until after details of the crash and lawsuit became public. The complaint included an affidavit from another passenger in the car saying McGee was not using her phone when the wreck happened. Neff's attorneys, Peter Coffman of Demetry DeCarlo and Alexandra Nelson and J. Timothy McDonald of Thompson Hine, filed a motion to dismiss under the anti-SLAPP statute. Judge Stacey Hydrick refused to do so, and Neff appealed. In reversing Hydrick, Court of Appeals Judge William Ray II, with the concurrence of Judges Christopher McFadden and Brian Rickman, wrote the anti-SLAPP law involves a two-step process to determine if a claim can be stricken. The first step is to determine whether a defendant's challenged actions “were taken in furtherance of his or her constitutional rights of petition or free speech in connection with an issue of public concern” as defined by the law. The second portion requires the plaintiff to show there is “probability” they will prevail at trial. “In the instant appeal, the parties do not contest that the procedural protections of the anti-SLAPP statute applies to the contested speech,” Ray wrote. But Neff argued the court erred in concluding McGee met her burden of establishing a probability that she would prevail on her defamation claim. Georgia law declares that statements “made in good faith” as part of someone's right of petition or free speech” are privileged, Ray said, and also protects lawyers' comments “fairly made” regarding a case they are involved in. “Neff's statements in the article and media interviews were both related to the complaint that his clients filed against McGee and Snapchat and were in connection with an issue of public concern, that is, whether Snapchat's Speed Filter is unsafe,” Ray said. Neff's evidence “demonstrated that he published the article to his law firm website and participated in media interviews in a good faith effort to get Snapchat to address the dangers associated with its Speed Filter,” he wrote. Hydrick's order denying Neff's motion to dismiss also said that there was evidence from which a jury could find that some of the statements in the article were false. But Ray said Neff did not know about that evidence until after publication. Gower said he will appeal. “We think the trial court got it correct, and we hope the Supreme Court will grant certiorari,” Gower said. Ray revived the Maynards' claims against Snapchat in a separate order on June 7, which Spalding County Superior Court Judge Josh Thacker dismissed in 2016. Thacker ruled that Snapchat was protected by the federal Communications Decency Act, which shields online publishers from liability for content provided by “third parties.” In reversing Thacker, Ray said the Maynard's suit “does not seek to hold Snapchat liable as a speaker or publisher of a third party user's content. Rather, they argue that their complaint seeks to hold Snapchat liable for the negligent creation, design and maintenance of the Speed Filter that encourages excessive speeding, not for the posts themselves.”