Brian Carter and Margie Rice successfully represented a client in two related cases filed in federal district court in San Francisco. The case grew out of the client’s neighbors’ cultivation of cannabis in a quiet, rural residential neighborhood, the client’s complaints to government officials, the government’s actions with respect to the neighbors’ cultivation, and the County’s legislation enabling neighborhoods to ‘opt out’ of the new cannabis ordinance. The neighbors sued the client for a deprivation of civil rights under 42 USC 1983, alleging a conspiracy by the client with government actors. The firm filed a FRCP Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, which was granted with leave to amend. The firm also tendered the client’s defense under the client’s homeowner’s policy of insurance, which defense was accepted under a reservation of rights. The insurer then filed a declaratory relief complaint in the same district court. The firm and appointed defense counsel filed a second 12(b)(6) motion, which was granted, with leave to amend as to one of the two claims against the client, but plaintiffs declined to amend as to the client. The insurer then agreed to dismiss its declaratory relief case. These cases highlight friction that is arising in Mendocino and surrounding/other counties between residents and commercial cannabis cultivators, the government’s response to complaints lodged by residents, the environmental impact of cannabis operations, and courts’ efforts to sort it all out. The litigation implicated the federal versus state treatment and/or characterization of cannabis, constitutional and statutory civil rights, the law of conspiracy, and citizens’ liability for essentially exercising their right to petition the government. Federal courts apply the Noerr-Pennington doctrine to much the same effect as California’s anti-SLAPP statute (Code of Civil Procedure, section 425.16), but without many of ‘extraordinary remedies’ that the California Legislature has embedded within the California statute. In this case, the neighbors’ resort to federal court rather than state court may well have been a function of the fact that under 42 USC 1983 a prevailing plaintiff is entitled to recover his/her/its attorney fees, and that the California anti-SLAPP statute (which includes attorney fees for a defendant prevailing on an anti-SLAPP motion) does not apply to federal claims asserted in federal court.