California Appellate Tracker

A homeowner who hired an unlicensed gardener to trim tall trees is vicariously liable to gardener’s employee who was injured in a fall due to gardener’s negligence. Read More

Plaintiff was entitled to automatic vacatur of an arbitration award because the arbitrator knowingly violated ethical rules by receiving and accepting offers to arbitrate other disputes involving defendant or its attorneys without notifying plaintiff of those offers and acceptances. Read More

An employee cannot state a claim against his employer based on a theory of “receiving stolen property” on the basis that the employer “received” the employee's labor without paying the agreed price for it.  Read More

Community college is not immune from liability to a student on a visiting community college team who suffers an injury on the defendant college's playing fields. Read More

A Washington state law requiring an employer to allow an employee to reschedule accrued vacation time to care for the medical needs of close relatives is not pre-empted by the federal Railway Labor Act, since that preemption extends only far enough to protect the role of labor arbitration in resolving disputes over collective bargaining agreements—which was not at issue in… Read More

The employee is the prevailing party, entitled to a fee award on an employer’s appeal from a Labor Commissioner’s ruling unless the appeal reduces the employer’s liability to $0. Read More

Retired former lab employees who sued the University of California claiming that it had unconstitutionally impaired their contractual rights to post-retirement health benefits were entitled to class certification after management of their health benefits plans passed to successor manager of the lab, who proceeded to institute less favorable policies. Read More

A golf course owes a duty of care to its patrons to take reasonable steps to protect them from swarms of ground-nesting yellow jackets.  Read More

The payment of money for a product that the plaintiff would not have purchased but for the false advertising—here, presenting products with a fake list price crossed out and an invented “discount” alongside—is sufficient economic injury to confer standing to sue under the unfair competition law, false advertising law, and the Consumer Legal Remedies Act. Read More

Plaintiff is estopped from arguing defendant waived untimeliness of her government claim because she misrepresented in the claim when she learned of her claim, making it seem timely when it was not. Read More

An employer-hired safety consultant owes employees a duty of care even if he does not assume all of the employer’s safety obligations to employees. Read More

The act of state doctrine barred heir of Dutch citizen from reclaiming from a museum a painting the citizen had been forced to sell to the Nazis, as the Dutch government had previously denied the heir’s claims. Read More

The district court properly dismissed this antitrust action because plaintiffs failed to allege facts to support the conclusion that the advertising on bibs worn by golf caddies on professional golf tours constituted a separate market or submarket.  Read More

The petitioner for a writ of administrative mandamus was correctly charged half the cost of the defendant agency’s preparation of the administrative record since petitioner had unreasonably delayed in preparing the record itself. Read More

The catch-all federal four-year statute of limitations applies to violations of the foreclosure prohibitions in the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act. Read More

California labor laws do not recognize the federal de minimis doctrine; hence, Starbucks's practice of requiring store managers to work without pay several minutes a day after clocking out was illegal. Read More

When a government agency agrees to produce requested documents but its former officer files a mandamus action against it seeking to bar that disclosure (in this case on attorney-client privilege grounds) and names the record requester as a real party in interest, the mandamus suit is not itself considered a suit to enforce the Public Records Act, and hence attorney… Read More

When the lawyer with a conflict of interest left the firm while its appeal from the order disqualifying it was pending, the appellate court remands for the trial court to consider whether disqualification is still required. Read More

Employee’s claim that employer had breached its fiduciary duties under ERISA in managing an employee benefit plan was not subject to arbitration since the benefit plan was not a party to the relevant arbitration agreement. Read More

Reverse passing off of a physical product (here, car tires) violates the Lanham Act even if that product embodies the plaintiff’s intellectual property. Read More