Pittman v. Beck Park Apartments Ltd.
A trial court retains jurisdiction to grant a motion to declare a plaintiff a vexatious litigant even after the plaintiff voluntarily dismisses the case. Read More
The following summaries are of recent published decisions of the California appellate courts, the Ninth Circuit, and the United States Supreme Court. The summaries are presented without regard to whether Severson & Werson represented a party in the case.
A trial court retains jurisdiction to grant a motion to declare a plaintiff a vexatious litigant even after the plaintiff voluntarily dismisses the case. Read More
A defendant who is not a party to a contract or a party’s agent is liable for interfering with the contract even if the contract contemplated the defendant’s performance of a different agreement with one of the parties. Read More
Handing a plaintiff a credit card receipt bearing the credit card’s expiration date does not create a concrete injury sufficient to confer Article III standing to sue under the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (“FACTA”) Read More
Agency records containing personal information are protected under the Information Privacy Act even if not maintained in the agency’s centralized personnel records. Read More
A judgment holder seeking to take advantage of the exception to the general immunity granted by the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) must identify a basis under one of § 1610's express immunity-abrogating provisions to attach and execute against a relevant property. Read More
To be protected as a whistleblower under the Dodd-Frank Act, an employee must report the information to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Read More
In deciding whether a defendant’s conduct is protected activity within the meaning of the anti-SLAPP statute, each defendant’s conduct must be analyzed separately. Read More
A government employee must pursue the employer’s administrative remedies before filing a civil action; Labor Code section 244 only allows the employee to forego remedies before the Labor Commissioner. Read More
San Francisco’s ordinance banning eviction of families with school-age children during the school year is not preempted by state law as it creates a substantive defense to eviction and does not interfere with state law unlawful detainer procedure. Read More
An unlawful detainer judgment does not bar the landlord’s civil action to collect past-due rent since the landlord can collect only limited amounts of rent in an unlawful detainer proceeding. Read More
The federal Occupational Safety and Health Act (“OSH Act”) does not preempt California law to the extent it allows a district attorney to bring an Unfair Competition Law (“UCL”) action based on the defendant's unlawful practice of failing to meet CalOSHA workplace safety standards even though the state plan did not provide for enforcement by that means. Read More
A California Justice Department interpretation of Penal Code section 27535―which limits the number of handguns that can be purchased in a 30 day period―is invalid because it was adopted in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act without the notice and comment period required for a formal regulation. Read More
By participating in arbitration for 10 months without objection, plaintiff waived right to have the court decide whether the dispute was arbitrable, and the plaintiff lost any right to have the award vacated by failing to raise that issue by petition or response within 100 days of service of the award. Read More
A class member who has already been given a chance to opt out of Rule 23(b)(3) class is not entitled to a second opt-out opportunity after the parties settle the case. Read More
A landowner who hired an independent contractor to work on the roof is not entitled to summary judgment in the contractor’s negligence suit; a question of fact remained as to whether the contractor could reasonably avoid the risk posed by the obvious hazard of an unprotected ledge from which he fell. Read More
California minimum wage and overtime pay laws are not inconsistent with the Fair Labor Standards Act and so apply to workers on oil rigs on the outer continental shelf off the California coast. Read More
The wage statement required by Labor Code section 226 need not separately list the hours worked and the hourly rate at which the employer makes contributions to an employer-union benefit trust based on the employee’s work. Read More
The trial court did not abuse its discretion in finding that neither party “prevailed” so as to recover fees or costs; defendant won the right to collect assignment fees, but plaintiff limited the fees to 4% of property value rather than the 10% defendant claimed. Read More
Demurring in state court does not waive the right to remove the case to federal court, at least when the complaint does not reveal on its face that the case is removable. Also, waiver of the right to remove is not a jurisdictional defect so the district court cannot remand sua sponte on that ground. Read More
The standard for loss causation under the Securities Exchange Act and Rule 10b-5 is the traditional tort standard of proximate causation. Read More