Opening gloating about how you plan to use the judges court as a tool to silence political opponents is not a good way to to be on the judge's good side.
And that's what he said.
"Improper or bad faith motivations are generally difficult to discern, as litigants often have a variety of objectives and may obscure their baser ones behind a veil of legitimate-sounding claims."
He's referring to the old standard for frivolous litigation, which required subjective bad faith. He is also pointing out that most litigants with bad motives are smarter than Akila Hughes, because he then launches into this tirade:
"In this case, however, Hughes openly discussed her improper motivations on both Twitter and her website. Indeed, Hughes admitted to potentially hundreds of thousands of followers that she intended to (i) “bankrupt” Benjamin (Doc. No. 43 at 2), (ii) stymy his attempts to crowdfund his legal costs (id. at 2–3), and (iii) use copyright laws to silence her political opponents and critics (id. at 4). Other posts, including her public boasting about the legal dispute on her social media accounts (even describing her complaint as a “[C]hristmas present” for Benjamin) and her public belittlement and celebrity-style feuding with Benjamin (id. at 5–7), strongly suggest that Hughes intended to sensationalize the litigation to elevate her own public profile and achieve a secondary financial gain."
In other words, "this fucking idiot spewed her bad motivations all over the fucking Internet like an absolute goddamn retard making it incredibly obvious she brought the lolsuit for an improper motive."
And then back to the legal standard:
"Together, then, Hughes’s public comments reveal an intent to abuse the legal system in order to further a personal agenda that had little to do with the Copyright Act."
Specifically, the conduct was sanctionable because while being ostensibly a copyright action, her real intention was not to protect any intellectual property, but to stamp out criticism of herself and get revenge on an enemy.
You are actually allowed to have revenge as a motivation in bringing litigation, but it is not a good idea to state it up front or gloat about it, or bring lawsuits about other things like copyright just because copyright has a huge potential for statutory damages even if you can't prove any real damages, and you realize the defamation case you really want is a dead loss.
This is what is called an "improper collateral purpose" in an abuse of process lawsuit. While that argument wasn't advanced here, the language of the Court indicates Sullivan was at least contemplating these issues in determining whether sanctions were warranted. He didn't have to make a finding of subjective bad faith, and didn't quite do that here, but he certainly indicated a high level of displeasure with this behavior by the plaintiff.
I should note that for some reason, I keep referring to this as something like Rule 11 sanctions or anti-SLAPP sanctions but it actually isn't. This is an award of fees under
Fogerty v. Fantasy, a leading copyright case where the prevailing defendant was awarded fees against an unreasonable lawsuit. Fogerty is, of course, John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival. A studio with which he later had a falling out ended up acquiring the rights to "Run Through the Jungle," a Fogerty-written CCR track.
Later, Fogerty released "The Old Man Down the Road." Fantasy sued him because it sounded like his previous song. In other words, this bunch of cocksuckers sued John Fogerty because he sounded too much like John Fogerty. This is the very definition of objectively unreasonable.
There was previously a principle in the copyright statute giving plaintiffs a discretionary award of attorney fees in part based on unreasonable behavior by the defendant, and this is what the statute said. In
Fogerty, the court decided this principle applies both ways and unreasonable plaintiffs in copyright actions now have to abide by the same reasonableness rules as defendants, so there's a penalty for bringing nonsensical copyright suits to harass the defendant.