California Appellate Tracker

Even though compensatory damages were reduced to zero by an offset for the other party’s breach of an independent covenant of a contract, a $2 million punitive damage award is affirmed on a breach of fiduciary duty claim. Read More

An agreement settling a fee dispute between a client and a law firm is enforced despite the client’s argument that the agreement lacked consideration. Read More

Department of Justice required SABMiller to divest entirely of its domestic beer business as a condition of approving its merger with Anheuser-Busch; so consumers could not maintain suit alleging that the merger would lessen competition in the domestic market. Read More

A trial court has no discretion to deny a prevailing party ordinary court costs on the ground that the losing party lacks the financial ability to pay those costs, and may deny or reduce expert witness fees awardable under Code of Civil Procedure section 998 only upon making specific statutory findings. Read More

A former client need prove only that attorney’s fraud and breach of fiduciary duty in secretly funneling information about the client to opposing party while negotiating a settlement was a substantial factor in causing her harm, not that she would have obtained a better result but from the attorney’s wrongdoing. Read More

College’s disciplinary procedures did not pass due process muster because student accused of assault did not have the opportunity to cross-examine the accuser either directly or indirectly, and fact-finder did not have the ability to watch accuser testify so as to assess her credibility. Read More

Facts sufficient to show recklessness (not merely negligence) are necessary in order for the issue of liability on elder abuse claim by medical services provider to go to the jury. Read More

A will’s bequest of 35% of residue including a specific ranch is a residuary, not a specific, bequest and so the distribution to the donee of the bequest is measured by the ranch’s post-death sale price. Read More

Although corporations are immune from antitrust liability for conspiracy when their alleged co-conspirator has substantially common ownership, this immunity does not apply when wholly unrelated corporations are alleged to be part of the conspiracy. Read More

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