Both cases involve commercial speech, but that's where the similarities end.

Nike wants to defend its own labor practices. U-Haul wants to take customers for a ride.

The U-Haul case begins with Alan Rosenberg, a San Jose commercial photographer planning a move from Aptos to Sacramento. In December 2001, Rosenberg saw U-Haul's Yellow Pages ad advising him to "Make your reservation -

CALL TODAY!"

So he did.

He scheduled an enclosed trailer for Dec. 28, and paid a $5 fee for the reservation. When the big day arrived, he called U-Haul to confirm, and - wouldn't you know - the trailer -wasn't available.

So Rosenberg cut his losses. He finagled an uncovered trailer from another company and, in the pelting rain, drove his soon-to-be-soaked furniture to Sacramento.

"I thought, how could you annoy a customer any more than this?" he says. Little did he know.

When his next credit card bill arrived, it included a $50 charge. From U- Haul. For canceling his reservation.

Assuming the charge was a clerical error, Rosenberg asked his local U-Haul office for a refund. But the office manager explained that the problem was out of his hands. U-Haul headquarters required the charge - just as it required agents to take reservations without having the slightest idea whether the requested equipment would be available on that date.

"I realized," says Rosenberg, "that this was close to an outright fraud."

With a little research, Rosenberg discovered a lot of former U-Haul customers who agreed. So he hired San Francisco attorneys Thomas Cohen and Karl Olson and, on July 23, filed a lawsuit charging the company with lying in the Yellow Pages about taking reservations.

U-Haul was ready. It had battled similar complaints in Massachusetts and Kansas, and -wasn't about to lie down for Rosenberg.

U-Haul filed a motion claiming that the suit was a SLAPP - a strategic lawsuit against public participation - designed to silence the company's constitutionally protected speech. Under California's anti-SLAPP statute, said the company, the judge should dismiss the suit and charge Rosenberg for U- Haul's attorneys' fees.

The judge refused, saying he "seriously consider(ed) this to be a frivolous motion."

But U-Haul filed an appeal, which halts Rosenberg's case until the state Court of Appeal can decide just how absurd the company's motion is.

U-Haul spokeswoman Jennifer Flachman -won't comment on the lawsuit. But she says customers are told reservations to rent equipment are merely "preferences" for a location. She says an agent calls the day before rental with a time and location, which - depending on the region - may be nearby. Or not. And she says cancellation fees were recently canceled.

Rosenberg says he never received a call before his move.

In any case, the issue is of more than passing interest in the Bay Area.

Times are, shall we say, suboptimal here. Defunct dot-commers and assorted boom casualties are fleeing the area in droves. With moving-induced stress through the roof, how pleasant can it be to plan flight in a U-Haul that, suddenly, becomes unavailable?

So pleasant, says Rosenberg, that a local U-Haul manager told him he feared getting killed by a wigged-out customer denied a reserved truck.

Obviously, U-Haul has angered more than a few customers, here and elsewhere in the nation. And if that's the way the company chooses to do business, so be it.

But let's keep the Constitution out of it.

E-mail Reynolds Holding at rholding@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page D - 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle