California Appellate Tracker

A party cannot “remove” a case from federal district court to bankruptcy court; instead, the party must seek a discretionary transfer to the district in which the bankruptcy is pending and then a discretionary referral to the bankruptcy court.   Read More

Bankrupt debtor is considered to have transferred property with intent to defraud his creditors even though he moved the assets out of one of his wholly owned corporations rather than from his own possession.   Read More

The dismissal of a securities class action on the ground it violates prohibition on lawsuits on behalf of 50 or more plaintiffs alleging state law claims of misrepresentation in connection with the purchase of a federally registered security is a 12(b)(1) dismissal for lack of jurisdiction, not a 12(b)(6) dismissal on the merits; as a result, a dismissed plaintiff may… Read More

District court did not abuse its discretion in issuing injunction barring defendant from altering copyrighted movies by stripping their content access protections and removing “objectionable” content, and then making the unauthorized, edited version available to its customers online.   Read More

Employer’s motion to compel arbitration should be granted because even though arbitration agreement suffered a high degree of procedural unconscionability, there was no substantive unconscionability.   Read More

Defendant employer waived its right to compel arbitration by first filing and then withdrawing a motion to compel arbitration before class certification, and then litigating the case for four years before filing a new motion to compel arbitration after the class was certified. Read More

Defendant’s Rule 68 offer of judgment resulted in a binding contract whereby plaintiff was to receive reasonable attorney fees to be awarded by the court; consequently, court could not revisit whether fee award was permitted, only what sum would be reasonable.   Read More

Cy pres award in class action settlement was proper, even though defendant had given donations in the past to some of the cy pres recipients and plaintiff's counsel were alumni of the recipient institutions.   Read More

A state court complaint’s misstatements of the amount owed and interest rate in a complaint a law firm filed to collect a consumer credit card debt were material and a violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.   Read More

Plaintiffs pled a viable 10b-5 claim against defendant pharmaceutical company for representing that its cancer test was FDA-cleared when, in fact, the FDA had not yet approved the test.   Read More

Bankruptcy debtors’ real estate commissions for property deals they had negotiated pre-petition, but which closed post-petition, should be considered part of the bankruptcy estate.   Read More

The gravamen or principal thrust analysis still governs whether a cause of action is subject to an Anti-SLAPP motion to strike; so if the gist or gravamen of plaintiff’s complaint was protected conduct, the Anti-SLAPP motion should be granted even if the complaint also alleged some non-protected conduct.   Read More

Plaintiff performed repair work on a collapse of soil under an street intersection allegedly caused by some fault of the county, but he could not recover the value of the work performed because he could not fit his case within the narrow limits governing estoppel against a government entity.   Read More

Under Colorado River, district court should have abstained from ruling in a suit to condemn easements and other rights as against the defendants' mining claims, since a state court had already declined to enter a decree that the mining claims were invalid.  Read More

A district court order vacating a bankruptcy court order confirming a bankruptcy plan and remanding for further proceedings is not a final order from which an appeal as of right may be taken to the Court of Appeals.   Read More

Plaintiff who sued under the Fair Credit Reporting Act alleged a sufficiently concrete injury to ensure his Article III standing in case against information aggregation service who posted incorrect information about his age, marital status, wealth, education level, and profession.   Read More

A debtor’s bankruptcy estate is entitled to the full amount of debtor’s spendthrift trust distributions due to be paid as of the petition date, except for the portion the beneficiary needs for his support or education if the trust instrument specifies the funds are to be used for that purpose.   Read More

A plaintiff in a Public Records Act case may be the prevailing party and thus entitled to an award of attorney fees, even if a final judgment eventually dismisses the action—so long as the action was the catalyst for the defendant's provision of the requested records.   Read More

Arbitration agreement that provided for full judicial review of the arbitration award—the same as if it had been a decision by a court—sufficiently specified that parties wanted enhanced judicial review, so they were entitled to receive review by normal appellate standards, not the restricted review normally given arbitration awards.   Read More

Plaintiff could not save his complaint from summary judgment by raising a new theory of liability for the first time in his summary judgment opposition.   Read More