California Appellate Tracker

An arbitrator's “partial final award” determining only that the arbitration agreement permitted the claimant to move for class certification is not an "award" which a court could confirm or vacate, although the trial court's order "denying" the petition to vacate the award was itself immediately appealable. Read More

A forum selection clause that applies to claims that "arising out of" a contract are limited to those relating to the interpretation and performance of the contract itself, whereas a clause that applies to claims "relating to" the contract encompasses disputes that reference the agreement or have some “logical or causal connection” to the agreement; here, the clause in the… Read More

A defendant, against whom a district attorney had filed an unfair competition action, was not entitled to a transfer of the case to a “neutral” county—i.e., a county other than the DA’s county. Read More

In this contested hearing on trustee’s accounting, the trust did not confer absolute discretion on the trustee, so his exercise of discretion was to be judged by a "reasonableness" standard, pursuant to which the trial court properly surcharged the trustee for using trust funds to pay for the beneficiary's ordinary living expenses, when the trust said the corpus was to… Read More

Code of Civil Procedure 1714.10, which requires prior court approval before filing a complaint charging an attorney with conspiring with his client in an attempt to contest or compromise a claim or dispute, can be invoked even if the complaint does not use the word conspiracy, so long as it alleges joint tortious action. Read More

Defendant motorcycle dealer could not enforce an arbitration clause in financing agreement between motorcycle buyer and lender, as a dealer is not an express third party beneficiary of the arbitration clause. Read More

The trial court erred in failing to award the plaintiff the value of home health care and other household services provided to plaintiff’s decedent before his death by several of his children, as well as the value of nursing services that the decedent would have rendered to his wife had he not been injured by the defendant. Read More

The Public Records Act does not require a governmental agency to create new records to produce pursuant to a request, but only requires the production of otherwise existing governmental records in certain circumstances. Read More

The workers' compensation system pre-empts tort claims by workers against employers’ utilization reviewers, who are empowered to modify or deny treatment requests. Read More

Plaintiff avoided summary judgment in a False Claims Act suit by showing defendant expressly agreed, as a condition of receiving federal student aid, not to pay incentive compensation to its recruiters, but then violated that agreement and still submitted claims for student aid. Read More

Arbitrator did not exceed his powers in dismissing plaintiff HOA’s claims against developer on the ground that HOA violated its own CC&Rs by bringing the claims without first having obtained approval from a majority of homeowners. Read More

The act of state doctrine defeated this attempted antitrust suit against a salt production company that was 51% owned by the Mexican government.  Read More

Civ. Code 1942.5(d) and (h), which grant a tenant a cause of action for a landlord's retaliatory eviction create an implied exception to the litigation privilege since otherwise the anti-retaliation statute would be rendered toothless; so tenant survived landlord’s Anti-SLAPP motion. Read More

The trial court did not abuse its discretion in assessing against a trust beneficiary's share and against the beneficiary personally the attorney fees incurred by the trustee in defending against the beneficiary's unreasonable and bad faith objections to the trustee's third accounting. Read More

To be subject to the doctrine of incorporation by reference and reviewable at the pleading stage, a document must be mentioned "extensively," not just once, in the complaint and must be a significant basis of the claims the complaint alleges; by the same token, the district court must be careful about the facts that it takes from documents that are… Read More

A cautionary tale for all those who draft and review settlement agreements: plaintiff’s attorney who breached confidentiality clause in settlement agreement could not be liable for breach of contract, since he signed off on the agreement only by indicating his “approval as to form and content” and therefore could not be considered a signatory or party to the contract. Read More

Summary judgment for promoters of a half-marathon race is reversed; though the race’s release form was enforceable, it could not waive liability for gross negligence, and a triable issue of fact existed as to whether the promoters were grossly negligent in failing to provide adequate emergency medical care at the finish line. Read More

An employer must give an employee a meal break if the shift is five hours or longer, but if the total work period is not more than six hours, the employer and employee may waive this requirement by mutual agreement, such as through a clear and unmistakable collective bargaining agreement. Read More

Defendant city government is immune from liability for accidents caused by police vehicular pursuits if it has promulgated a suitable written pursuit policy and requires annual training and certification by all officers that they have received, read, and understood the policy; the officers need not have actually signed the required certifications. Read More

A borrower may challenge an interest rate as unconscionable even when the Legislature has exempted the loan from usury rate limitations. Read More