Background
Daniel Tews served as chief financial officer of Falcon Steel America, LLC, whose assets were sold in 2019 amid financial difficulties. Tews claimed that Falcon Steel’s representatives agreed to pay him $230,000 in severance, a $172,500 retention bonus, and a $57,500 incentive bonus. He later authorized a $230,000 severance payment and bonus payments that were grossed up for taxes, causing the company to disburse $375,960.15 for the bonuses so that he received $230,000 net.
ReignRock Capital Partners and its managing member, Robert Richardson, maintained that the additional payments were unauthorized. After Richardson submitted an attorney-prepared theft memorandum to police and communicated with investigators and a prosecutor, a grand jury indicted Tews for felony theft. The prosecution was ultimately dismissed and Tews’s arrest was expunged. Tews then sued for malicious prosecution, defamation, and conspiracy. The trial court granted the defendants’ Texas Citizen Participation Act motion as to defamation and conspiracy but denied it as to malicious prosecution.
The Court’s Holding
The Second Court of Appeals affirmed. Viewing the evidence in Tews’s favor under the TCPA, the court held that he presented clear and specific evidence supporting a prima facie case that the payments were authorized and that he was therefore innocent of theft. That evidence included his affidavit describing the alleged compensation agreement, the offer letter and manager authorization concerning severance and bonuses, and company records treating the payments as compensation. The defendants’ conflicting account created fact disputes rather than establishing a right to dismissal as a matter of law.
The court also held that Tews made the required prima facie showings of causation, lack of probable cause, and malice. Because the individuals who allegedly approved the compensation were also the source of the contrary information supplied to law enforcement, the evidence supported a rational inference that their statements were a but-for cause of the prosecution. On probable cause, the question was whether a reasonable person would have believed a crime occurred based on the facts the complainants honestly and reasonably believed; Tews’s evidence that they knew the payments had been approved supported an inference that they lacked such a belief. The same evidence, together with the alleged provision of false information, supported malice. The court did not decide the challenge to the police report because its analysis did not require that report.
Key Takeaways
- At the TCPA stage, a claimant need only produce the minimum evidence necessary to support rational inferences on each challenged element; competing evidence ordinarily presents fact questions rather than grounds for dismissal.
- Knowingly providing false information may establish procurement when the prosecution depended on that information, and it may support malice, but it does not itself determine probable cause.
- Probable cause turns on whether a reasonable person would believe a crime occurred given the facts the complainant honestly and reasonably believed before criminal proceedings began.
Why It Matters
The decision illustrates how a malicious-prosecution claim may survive early TCPA dismissal when disputed testimony and business records support an inference that the complainants authorized the conduct they later characterized as criminal. Independent decisions by police, prosecutors, and a grand jury do not necessarily defeat causation when the allegedly false information was essential to determining whether the conduct constituted a crime.
The opinion also carefully separates the elements of probable cause, causation, and malice. False reporting bears on procurement and malice, while probable cause focuses on the complainant’s honestly and reasonably held understanding of the underlying facts.