A San Diego woman who sued the man behind a viral GoFundMe campaign that raised more than $100,000 for a Starbucks barista saw her entire case thrown out of court months after she filed it. Amber Gilles accused Matt Cowan and his marketing agency of defamation and misusing her image after he launched the fundraiser in response to a Facebook post she wrote about a maskless confrontation at a San Diego Starbucks in June 2020.
The dispute began when Gilles visited the Starbucks without a mask and barista Lenin Gutierrez asked her to wear one. In a Facebook video posted after the incident, Gutierrez said that when Gilles entered the store without a mask, he asked if she had one and was preparing to show her Starbucks' corporate health guidelines before she photographed him and left, according to a report from the San Diego Union-Tribune. Gilles posted his photo to Facebook with the caption “meet lenen from starbucks who refused to serve me cause i'm not wearing a mask,” a post that went on to receive hundreds of thousands of interactions, as originally reported by Tampa Bay 28.
The confrontation happened just after Governor Gavin Newsom issued a statewide face-covering mandate on June 18, 2020, and San Diego County had already required masks inside businesses since May 1, 2020, according to Business Insider. Gilles claimed she had a medical exemption preventing her from wearing a mask and provided two documents to support that claim, including one from an unnamed San Diego chiropractor stating she had underlying breathing conditions. She also said she had mask-acne issues, said she was sick, and said she did not believe masks prevented the spread of COVID-19.
A Small Fundraiser Turns Into a $105,000 Windfall
Cowan, who co-founded the Irvine-based digital marketing agency Mercy Agency LLC, set up the GoFundMe campaign in June 2020 with a modest goal of just $1,000 after seeing Gilles's Facebook post, according to Law & Crime. He said he did not personally know Gutierrez and used only publicly available information to create the fundraiser, adding that he did not use company resources or organizational connections to support the campaign. The campaign ultimately collected $105,445 from more than 7,000 individual donors, and Cowan, along with YouTuber Will Collette, presented the money to Gutierrez on July 7, 2020, to support his education and his passion for dance, the outlet reported.
Before filing suit, Gilles had publicly demanded in July 2020 that she receive half of the roughly $100,000 raised for Gutierrez, calling the viral fund a reward for what she characterized as bad behavior and saying she had been discriminated against, according to CBS News. She said she lost work because of the incident, and a company that had provided her work opportunities dropped her after it went viral. Gilles also said she received death threats and had not planned to apologize to the public.
The Lawsuit and Its Claims
Gilles filed her lawsuit against Cowan and his company in San Diego County Superior Court in February 2021, formally alleging three causes of action: violation of her right to publicity, misappropriation of her name and likeness, and false light invasion of privacy. Her attorney, Michael Harrington, said the GoFundMe was a defamatory misappropriation of Gilles's name and likeness that also involved an invasion of privacy, and that it commercially used her name and likeness without permission. Harrington added that Gilles should not be treated abusively regardless of whether she should have worn a mask, and that civil dialogue should not lead to death threats.
Cowan said he expected to be sued and maintained he would not do anything differently, arguing he should not be penalized for actions taken by other people who sent messages to Gilles. He later set up a separate GoFundMe to help cover his legal fees in the case, according to the seed reporting.
Judge Tosses the Case Under California's Anti-SLAPP Law
The lawsuit did not survive long in court. San Diego Superior Court Judge Keri Katz granted an anti-SLAPP motion filed by Cowan's defense firm, Larson LLP, striking Gilles's complaint in its entirety and dismissing the case on August 13, 2021, according to a statement from Larson LLP. California's anti-SLAPP statute, codified at Code of Civil Procedure Section 425.16, is designed to protect defendants from lawsuits that target speech on matters of public concern, and prevailing defendants are entitled by statute to mandatory recovery of reasonable attorney's fees and legal costs from the plaintiff, per FindLaw.
Larson LLP had filed the anti-SLAPP motion in May 2021 alongside a request for judicial sanctions against Gilles and her attorney over what the firm characterized as bad-faith conduct in bringing a frivolous lawsuit. The dismissal meant Gilles's claims against Cowan and Mercy Agency, LLC were rejected outright rather than settled or narrowed.
Following the Starbucks incident, Gilles remained an active anti-mask protestor, engaging in another public, recorded altercation in August 2020 with employees at a Sprouts Farmers Market in San Diego over her refusal to wear a mask, per the same Law & Crime report. That episode underscored a broader pattern of confrontations tied to mask enforcement during the pandemic, well beyond the single incident that sparked the fundraiser and, ultimately, the failed lawsuit against Cowan.
