A federal judge in San Diego has closed out a lawsuit filed by an Azerbaijani attorney who sought $500 million in general damages from more than 30 defendants accused of conspiring to mischaracterize the plaintiffs’ words and ruin her reputation.
Judge Robert S. Huie of the Southern District of California dismissed attorney Aynur Baghirzade’s third amended complaint on April 14. The complaint said the defendants, including the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA), Yelp Inc., Google Inc., Orange County Bar Association, Los Angeles County Bar Association and YouTube LLC, had entered into a wide-ranging conspiracy to harass, intimidate and damage her business and reputation.
The drama described in Baghirzade’s lawsuit seems to have been sparked by the attorney’s 2023 posts on X, formerly Twitter, describing the hostilities between the nations of Azerbaijan and Armenia in the Caucasus Mountains region. One post said Armenia is a threat to the South Caucasus and “a carcinoma that must be reformed up to its core to allow Caucasus to live peacefully and prosperously.” Another said “we have to delete (the Armenian) project as soon as possible.”
The ANCA reported the posts to the California State Bar and requested a review of her standing as an attorney, according to the Armenian newspaper Asbarez.
The lawsuit alleges that the harassment she and others allegedly faced, including misrepresentations of Baghirzade’s views, was carried out using a “network of Armenians working for the U.S. companies,” which the complaint refers to as “Armenian Enterprise.” In a statement, the ANCA described the charges as baseless.
“The Armenian National Committee of America and the Armenian National Committee of America – Western Region welcome the April 14 … decision by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California to dismiss a lawsuit brought by Aynur Baghirzade,” the statement says.
In the lawsuit, Baghirzade also said she became the target of threats after denying that the 1915-16 Armenian genocide ever took place.
Among the reasons Judge Huie cited for dismissing the lawsuit was its impact on the defendants if it were allowed to continue.
“The prejudice to defendants associated with continuing to litigate this case is significant,” he said in his opinion. “(The) plaintiff has sued over 30 defendants, has amended her complaint more than once and has failed to state a single claim against a single defendant that is not subject to dismissal. Plaintiff accuses defendants of extensive criminal conduct, and her pleadings frequently adopt a tone of animus, hostility, suspicion or sarcasm in referring to (the) defendants.”
Huie called Baghirzade’s second amended complaint fanciful because it alleges multiple companies that appear unrelated to each other all conspired for the sole purpose of harming her reputation. And her third amended complaint spanned 198 pages, more than twice as long as her second amended complaint, alleging an even wider conspiracy and failing to address the multiple deficiencies the judge asked her to correct.
“(The third amended complaint) continues to ascribe events in her life – such as discovering flies in her apartment on one occasion, finding a cockroach in her hotel room or having her car towed after parking in someone else’s spot in her building – to the malevolent conspiracy of defendants without any factual basis for this ascription plausibly alleged,” the opinion states.
Baghirzade did not respond to a request for comment on Huie’s decision, and she has filed a notice of appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.