California Appellate Tracker

Plaintiff secured a judgment against X based in part on a contract containing an attorney fee clause.  Thereafter, plaintiff sued Saleen seeking to enforce the judgment against him as X's alter ego.  Saleen won and moved for an attorney fee award.  Held, Saleen is entitled to a fee award.  Even though the suit on the judgment is technically not a… Read More

Under CCP 527.6(j)(1), the determination whether to modify or terminate a civil harassment restraining order is committed to “the discretion of the court.” That discretion includes, but is not limited to, the three grounds for modifying ordinary injunctions set forth in section 533.  A trial court has the discretion to modify a restraining order when, after considering the relevant evidence… Read More

It is error to dismiss an original complaint without leave to amend unless the complaint discloses on its face a reason why it cannot be amended to state a viable claim.  On appeal from such a dismissal, the appellant need not show anything in the record demonstrates that the complaint can be amended to allege a viable claim; rather, the… Read More

Labor Code 226 applies to wage statements provided by an employer if the employee’s principal place of work is in California.  This test is satisfied if the employee works a majority of the time in California or, for interstate transportation workers whose work is not primarily performed in any single state, if the worker has his or her base of… Read More

An employer must provide wage statements complying with Labor Code section 226 when an employee’s principal place of work is in California, which ordinarily means the employee works a majority of the time in California.  For interstate transportation workers and others who do not spend a majority of their working time in any one state, this test is satisfied when… Read More

State law limits on wage borrowing permit compensation schemes that promise to compensate all hours worked at a level at or above the minimum wage, even if particular components of those schemes fail to attribute to each and every compensable hour a specific amount equal to or greater than the minimum wage.  The no-borrowing principle--that an employer cannot "borrow" compensation… Read More

In the exercise of their equitable powers, courts may equitably toll statutes of limitation except when the Legislature has clearly indicated its intent that a limitations period not by extended by equitable tolling.  Gov. Code 11523, which sets a 30-day deadline for filing a petition for administrative mandate to review administrative determinations, does not clearly exclude equitable tolling.  Thus, equitable… Read More

The federal statute of limitations applicable to actions by the Federal Housing Finance Agency sets the limitations period at 6 years for contract actions and 3 years for tort actions.  12 U.S.C. § 4617(b)(12)(A).  This decision holds that the same limitations provisions apply to assignees of instruments once owned by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, the housing finance isntitutions that… Read More

Bus. & Prof. Code 17204 and 17207 confer standing on district attorneys to sue under the UCL for restitution and civil penalties in the name of the people of the State of California.  A district attorney may obtain all allowed forms of relief--injunction, restitution and civil penalties--statewide at least so long some of the violations occurred in the county which… Read More

After a state court entered an $800,000 judgment against him for conversion, Delannoy filed a Chapter 7 petition.  The trustee in the bankruptcy case sold Delannoy's state court appeal rights to the state court plaintiff which then dismissed the appeal and asserted the state court judgment as issue preclusive in connection with its objection to discharge in the bankruptcy court. … Read More

A sorority did not owe a duty of care to guests of its off-campus party to protect them from assault and battery by uninvited persons crashing the party.  The measures that plaintiff claimed the sorority should have taken to prevent the harm--hiring private security personnel and maintaining and enforcing an invited guest list--were highly burdensome.  To justify that degree of… Read More

Substantial evidence supported the trial court's finding that defendant's payment to an insider creditor who had not sought to enforce his debt for longer than the applicable statute of limitations was nevertheless not a fraudulent transfer made with actual intent to defraud plaintiff, a judgment creditor, but was only a preference--paying one creditor rather than another.  On appeal, the appellate… Read More

A temporary loss of money is sufficient to confer Article III standing.  Here, defendant wrongly withheld $531 in state sales tax from plaintiff.  Although defendant refunded those taxes, it did not pay plaintiff the $3 in interest that plaintiff claimed to be owed for the time defendant had withheld the sales tax.  Loss of even a small sum of money… Read More

Defendant required its service technicians to drive their personal vehicles to their first off-site service call of the day and from the last service call of the day.  Plaintiff claimed that defendant was required to pay the technicians minimum wages for the time so spent and to reimburse them for the expense of driving to and from the first and… Read More

An animal that is not itself sick is not a product for purposes of a design defect products liability case.  Here, a rat that Petco sold as a pet had a bacterial infection that did not produce a disease affecting the rat but one that rarely, but in this case, fatally, produces a disease in humans.  This decision holds that… Read More

Under 15 USC 78u(d)(5), in an action commenced by the SEC, the court may award "any equitable relief that may be appropriate or necessary for the benefit of investors."  The term "equitable relief" allows the court to grant the categories of relief typically available in equity as shown by consulting works on equity jurisprudence.  Those works show that restitution or… Read More

If no objection is raised by the US Trustee or any creditor, it is permissible for a debtor to propose and obtain confirmation of a Chapter 13 plan with an estimated duration rather than a fixed term, so long as the plan duration does not exceed the statutory maximum of three or five years. Read More

Filbin v. Fitzgerald (2012) 211 Cal.App.4th 154 and other cases involving claims that the lawyer's malpractice caused the client to enter into an inadequate settlement--so-called "settle and sue" cases--say that the client must prove the causation and damages elements of the claim to a "legal certainty."  Whatever that may mean, this decision holds that it does not mean that the… Read More

The trial court correctly denied an employer's motion to compel arbitration after the ex-employee plaintiff dismissed his UCL claim, leaving only a PAGA claim. The employer's arbitration clause stated that the arbitration clause did not apply to any representative action under PAGA, which instead had to be litigated in court.  By specifying that the "action" would be litigated in court,… Read More

The trial court correctly denied defendant's Anti-SLAPP motion.  Plaintiff, a celebrity, alleged that Mathews, a private eye, hired by Bauer, a tabloid publisher, had illegally installed a tracking device on the car driven by plaintiff's caretaker.  Though news gathering efforts are protected speech under CCP 425.16(e), here Bauer denied that it authorized placing the tracking device, so it couldn't claim… Read More