Kentucky Anti-SLAPP Ruling Ends Hog Farm Defamation Lawsuit

Kentucky Anti-SLAPP Law Ends Hog Farm Defamation Suit, and a $46,998.60 Fee Award Stands

The Kentucky Court of Appeals on September 4, 2026 affirmed the dismissal of a Daviess County hog farm operator's defamation suit against neighbors and a nonprofit under the Kentucky Uniform Public Expression Protection Act, KRS 454.460 to 454.478, together with a $46,998.60 fee award.

Information last verified on September 7, 2026.

Status: Decided. The Kentucky Court of Appeals rendered O'Bryan Grain Farms, Inc. v. Peters, No. 2025-CA-0040-MR, on September 4, 2026 at 10:00 a.m., and designated it TO BE PUBLISHED. The panel affirmed orders of the Daviess Circuit Court (Hon. Thomas O. Castlen, Judge; Action No. 24-CI-00325) that denied the plaintiff limited discovery, granted the defendants expedited relief under the Kentucky Uniform Public Expression Protection Act, dismissed the single defamation count with prejudice, and awarded $46,998.60 in attorney's fees and litigation expenses. Judges Cetrulo, A. Jones, and Moynahan sat; Judge A. Jones wrote the opinion and, at page 29, all concurred. The opinion is captioned OPINION AFFIRMING. It was rendered three days before this article and, as a slip opinion, says nothing about rehearing or any petition for further review, so it would not reflect any filing made after September 4, 2026.

Jurisdiction scope: This article covers Kentucky's Uniform Public Expression Protection Act, KRS 454.460 to 454.478, as construed by the Kentucky Court of Appeals on September 4, 2026. It binds Kentucky courts. It does not describe federal practice, and it does not describe any other state's anti-SLAPP statute; those differ in coverage, procedure, and fee rules. For the underlying tort in this state, see how Kentucky treats a defamation claim.

What Happened

O'Bryan Grain Farms, Inc. operates swine farming operations and related waste-handling facilities in Daviess County, Kentucky (Opinion at 2). Donald Peters, Rick Murphy, and George Schadler live near some of those operations. Peters and Murphy belong to CAPPAD, Inc., which the opinion identifies as Community Against Pig Pollution and Disease, a nonprofit formed to address concerns about the environmental impacts of concentrated animal feeding operations in Daviess County; Schadler is not a member but shares similar concerns (Opinion at 2).

Beginning around 2014, the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet investigated the operations for alleged violations of state environmental law. On May 11, 2021 the Cabinet opened an administrative enforcement action before the Office of Administrative Hearings seeking civil penalties, revocation of O'Bryan's operational permit, and other remedial relief, and later amended that complaint. Peters moved to intervene in December 2021, and the hearing officer granted the motion in part on May 27, 2022. That proceeding was still pending when the trial court ruled (Opinion at 3).

On February 9, 2024, O'Bryan sent the four defendants a cease-and-desist letter asserting that they had made "numerous false statements regarding the business operations and environmental compliance of O'Bryan Grain Farms and its entities, not only to the community but repeatedly to environmental cabinets" (Opinion at 3-4, quoting Record at 311-12). On March 18, 2024 O'Bryan filed suit in Daviess Circuit Court asserting a single defamation claim, alleging:

"From 2022 to 2023, and prior to, Defendants spoke and published of and concerning this Plaintiff, certain slanderous, false, malicious, and defamatory words alleging misconduct in the operation of their pig farms to the community, other businesses and to various governmental regulatory agencies with the specific intention of causing it harm." [O'Bryan Grain Farms, Inc. v. Peters, No. 2025-CA-0040-MR, Opinion at 4 (Ky. App. Sept. 4, 2026), quoting Record at 1-3]

The defendants moved for expedited relief under KUPEPA on April 19, 2024, which stayed discovery. On June 5, 2024, two days before its response was due under an agreed scheduling order, O'Bryan asked for leave to take limited discovery under KRS 454.466(4), seeking interrogatory answers identifying which communications the defendants claimed were protected and which they maintained were true (Opinion at 14). The trial court denied that motion, then denied a later request to supplement the response with documents obtained through open-records requests to the Cabinet, then granted the KUPEPA motion, dismissed the complaint with prejudice, and awarded $46,998.60 under KRS 454.478 (Opinion at 5).

In a footnote at page 3, the Court of Appeals took judicial notice that, after the trial court ruled, a final agreed order was entered in Energy and Environment Cabinet v. Jerry Wayne O'Bryan d/b/a Jerry O'Bryan Hog Farm, No. DOW-20-3-0035 (Ky. Energy & Env't Cabinet, Off. of Admin. Hearings Mar. 25, 2026), under which O'Bryan agreed to undertake specified remedial measures and to pay a stipulated civil penalty of $45,000 in settlement of the enforcement action. The panel drew no conclusion from that order about the defamation claim.

What the Law Actually Says

KUPEPA is codified at KRS 454.460 to 454.478 and took effect on July 14, 2022. It is modeled on the Uniform Public Expression Protection Act approved by the Uniform Law Commission in 2020, but the Court of Appeals stressed at page 8 that Kentucky did not adopt the model verbatim, and that the text the General Assembly enacted controls. Understanding what the statute does is a different exercise from understanding the elements a defamation plaintiff must plead, because KUPEPA is a procedural gate that opens before the merits are reached.

Coverage. KRS 454.462(1) applies the Act to a cause of action asserted against a person based on that person's communication in a legislative, executive, judicial, administrative, or other governmental proceeding; communication on an issue under consideration or review in such a proceeding; or "[e]xercise of the right of freedom of speech or of the press, the right to assemble or petition, or the right of association, as guaranteed by the United States Constitution or Kentucky Constitution, on a matter of public concern" (KRS 454.462(1)(c)). KRS 454.460(4) defines a matter of public concern to include "[a] matter of political, social, or other interest to the community" and "[a] subject of concern to the public". KRS 454.462(2)(a) then carves out ten categories of claims, including actions against governmental units, actions about the sale or lease of goods or services, real property disputes, bodily injury and wrongful death claims, insurance claims, common law fraud, claims under KRS Chapters 401 to 407, specified employment and whistleblower claims, and claims under the Kentucky Consumer Protection Act.

Timing. Under KRS 454.464 a defending party may file a special motion for expedited relief no later than sixty days after service of the pleading, or later on a showing of good cause. KRS 454.468 requires a hearing within sixty days of filing, subject to limited exceptions, and KRS 454.474 requires a ruling within sixty days after the hearing.

The discovery stay. KRS 454.466(1)(a) provides that on the filing of the motion, all other proceedings between the moving and responding parties, including discovery and any pending hearing or motion, shall be stayed. KRS 454.466(4) is the narrow exception:

"During a stay under subsection (1) of this section, the court shall allow limited discovery if a party shows that specific information is necessary to establish whether a party has satisfied or failed to satisfy a burden under KRS 454.472(1) and the information is not reasonably available unless discovery is allowed, including but not limited to situations where a witness may be unavailable or records may have been destroyed." [KRS 454.466(4)]

The Court of Appeals read that as a two-part showing carried by the responding party, and observed at page 11 that "KUPEPA therefore authorizes only the discovery necessary to resolve the expedited motion itself; it does not permit general merits discovery while the anti-SLAPP motion remains pending." Because no Kentucky appellate decision had set the standard of review for a KRS 454.466(4) ruling, the panel adopted abuse of discretion, reasoning at pages 16 to 17 that trial courts already hold broad discretion over discovery.

The three-part test. KRS 454.472(1) directs the court to dismiss with prejudice if the moving party establishes under KRS 454.462(1) that the Act applies, the responding party fails to establish under KRS 454.462(2) that it does not, and either the responding party fails to establish a prima facie case as to each essential element or the moving party shows a failure to state a claim or an entitlement to judgment as a matter of law. In ruling, KRS 454.470 tells the court to consider the pleadings, the motion, any reply or response, and any evidence that could be considered on summary judgment.

Fees and appeals. KRS 454.478 provides that on such a motion, or on the appeal of an order granting or denying one, the court shall award court costs, reasonable attorney's fees, and reasonable litigation expenses related to the motion to the moving party if the moving party prevails, or to the responding party if the responding party prevails and the court finds the motion was brought without good cause. KRS 454.476 lets any party appeal as a matter of right from an order granting or denying such a motion in whole or in part.

Applying that framework, the panel held that the defendants carried the KRS 454.472(1)(a) burden, that O'Bryan neither argued below nor identified on appeal any KRS 454.462(2) exclusion, and that O'Bryan failed the prima facie step. Kentucky defamation requires defamatory language, about the plaintiff, which is published, and which causes injury to reputation, per Toler v. Süd-Chemie, Inc., 458 S.W.3d 276, 282 (Ky. 2014), and because truth is an absolute defense the statement must be capable of being proven false, per Cromity v. Meiners, 494 S.W.3d 499, 503 (Ky. App. 2015). Those are the authorities Kentucky courts apply to truth and opinion as answers to a defamation claim. The panel wrote at page 26 that "Without knowing what statements were allegedly defamatory, the trial court could not undertake the legal analysis Kentucky defamation law requires", and at page 27 that "A plaintiff cannot satisfy its burden by requiring the defendants, through discovery, to identify the statements the plaintiff itself contends are actionable." Having resolved the case under KRS 454.472(1)(c)1., the panel expressly declined to reach the trial court's alternative analysis under KRS 454.472(1)(c)2. (Opinion at 28).

Analysis: Why This Matters

The following is analysis from the Recording Law Editorial Team.

The most operationally significant part of this opinion is not the outcome but the sequencing it enforces. KUPEPA freezes discovery the moment a special motion is filed, and KRS 454.466(4) reopens it only on a two-part showing. The panel held the trial court reasonably concluded that O'Bryan flunked the second part, because its own February 2024 cease-and-desist letter, and its counsel's statements at the July 3, 2024 hearing, showed it already knew which communications it considered defamatory (Opinion at 15, 17). A plaintiff who writes a demand letter asserting knowledge of false statements is therefore working against a later argument that it cannot identify those statements without discovery.

The second point is about pleading specificity in a statute that never mentions it. Nothing in KRS 454.472(1)(c)1. says a defamation plaintiff must itemize each statement. The requirement emerges from the structure: the court must decide whether statements carry defamatory meaning, whether they are fact or opinion, whether they can be proven false, whether they were published, and whether a privilege attaches, and the panel reasoned at page 26 that it cannot run that analysis on statements nobody has identified. That reasoning is not unique to Kentucky. The panel cited Mackey v. Krause, 575 P.3d 1162, 1179 (Utah 2025), and Anderson v. Anderson, 36 N.W.3d 811, 821 (Minn. Ct. App. 2026), both construing the same uniform framework.

Third, the coverage holding rests on two independent footings, and only one of them requires a government proceeding. The panel treated complaints to a state environmental agency as governmental-proceeding communications under KRS 454.462(1)(a) and (b), and treated community-directed statements about a large swine operation as a matter of public concern under KRS 454.460(4), noting that the Act is construed broadly (Davenport Extreme Pools & Spas, Inc. v. Mulflur, 698 S.W.3d 140, 155 (Ky. App. 2024)) and that public concern is not limited to governmental affairs or political discourse (Andes Roofing, LLC v. Rusnak, 726 S.W.3d 13, 19 (Ky. App. 2025)).

Finally, the fee exposure is structural. Under KRS 454.478 the award to a prevailing movant is framed in mandatory terms, so the discretionary question is the amount rather than the entitlement. Here the trial court held a hearing, reviewed billing records and affidavits, considered objections, and reduced certain requested amounts before arriving at $46,998.60, which is the record that survived abuse-of-discretion review (Opinion at 29). One caution worth stating plainly: this is a single published intermediate appellate opinion applying a statute enacted in 2022, and its reach beyond these facts is a question later Kentucky decisions will work out.

How This Affects You

For people in Kentucky who report suspected environmental violations to a state agency or raise the issue with neighbors, this decision describes a statute that lets a defendant put a defamation claim to an early, expedited test and recover fees if the motion succeeds. It does not make any particular statement lawful, and it does not decide whether any specific communication was privileged; the panel expressly did not reach that question because no statement was ever identified (Opinion at 27).

For a Kentucky business considering a defamation suit over criticism connected to a regulatory proceeding, the practical consequence is front-loaded proof. Once a KUPEPA motion lands, discovery stops by operation of KRS 454.466(1)(a), and, absent the narrow KRS 454.466(4) showing, the responding party has to come forward with evidence on each element of its claim using what it already has. General assertions that false statements were made did not clear that bar here. The broader landscape of defamation law varies considerably from state to state, and anti-SLAPP procedure varies even more, so a rule described here should not be assumed to apply outside Kentucky.

Nothing in this article evaluates any individual dispute. Whether a specific statement is actionable, whether a claim falls within one of the ten exclusions in KRS 454.462(2)(a), and what a court would do with a particular record are questions for a lawyer licensed in the relevant state.

This is general legal information, not legal advice. It addresses Kentucky law, specifically KRS 454.460 to 454.478 and the Kentucky Court of Appeals opinion in O'Bryan Grain Farms, Inc. v. Peters, No. 2025-CA-0040-MR, and reflects sources verified on September 7, 2026. Statutes are amended and decisions are reviewed; consult a lawyer licensed in your jurisdiction about your specific situation.

Related articles

• Defamation rules in the Commonwealth of Kentucky
• What a plaintiff has to prove in a defamation case
• Defenses that defeat a defamation claim
• State-by-state defamation coverage

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Last updated: 2026-09-07. Details verified as of 2026-09-07.