California Appellate Tracker

After an Indiana-based bus manufacturer was dismissed from the case, California law governed Chinese bus passengers’ claims against a California-based bus distributor for injuries sustained when the bus overturned in Arizona; only California had a governmental interest in application of its law.  Read More

Defendant’s Anti-SLAPP motion was properly denied when he was sued for secretly tape recording, and later publishing, a conversation that took place over dinner at a restaurant with plaintiff’s president, because even though this was protected activity, plaintiff showed a probability of success on its claims for, among other things, invasion of privacy.  Read More

For purposes of the five-year deadline for bringing a civil case to trial, trial “commences” when a jury is impaneled and sworn—even if the voir dire is not concluded within the five-year period.  Read More

The sue-and-be-sued provision in Fannie Mae's statutory charter does not confer federal jurisdiction over suits against Fannie Mae or allow it to remove those suits to federal court absent some other basis for federal jurisdiction.  Read More

Probate court did not err in charging the interests of two trust beneficiaries for the fees incurred by the trustee in defending against their unwarranted charges which were brought in bad faith and supported by false testimony, but the court did err by imposing personal liability on the beneficiaries for sums exceeding the amount of their interest in the trust.  Read More

Based on a recently-enacted Oregon statute requiring courts to enter a limited, immediately appealable judgment when denying an Anti-SLAPP motion, the Ninth Circuit now has jurisdiction to consider appeals from orders denying Anti-SLAPP motions under Oregon law.  Read More

A California state court judgment must be given issue preclusive effect on any issue it decides even if it is affirmed by the state Court of Appeal only on other issues.   Read More

The Court of Appeals lacked jurisdiction over a non-final order denying motion to compel arbitration because the motion was brought under California’s Arbitration Act, not the Federal Arbitration Act.  Read More

District court properly denied equitable relief to plaintiff whose attorney filed a claim challenging a forfeiture one day late, since this error was the result of ordinary negligence rather than an extraordinary circumstance that would warrant relief.  Read More

An attorney engaged in debt collection and violated the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act by sending a homeowner a letter demanding payment of delinquent homeowners association dues and threatening to file a lien on the homeowner’s property unless the dues were paid within 25 days, thus overshadowing the FDCPA-required notice that the homeowner had 30 days to demand validation of… Read More

Triable issues of fact existed as to whether defendant employer had terminated plaintiff’s employment in retaliation for exercising her rights under California’s Family and Medical Leave Act.  Read More

Plaintiffs who purchased applications from Apple's App Store are direct purchasers from Apple and can sue it for monopolizing the market for distribution of applications that run on the iPhone.  Read More

Because no statute, regulation or contract provision required defendant to use a progress charting tool known as an earned value management system, defendant did not violate the False Claims Act, as plaintiff alleged, by an implied false certification that it used that tool.  Read More

Neither the psychotherapist-patient privilege nor the state constitutional right of privacy is absolute, and consequently neither of these defeats the statutory requirement that mental health professionals report their patients to the police or child welfare agencies when the patients disclose that they have accessed child pornography through electronic or digital media.  Read More

Statements an attorney made to news media about a suit he filed on behalf of a client were protected speech under the Anti-SLAPP statute because the lawsuit and the attorney's statements about it involved matters of public interest such as the allegation that the defendants in that suit had implanted phony spinal implants in thousands of patients.  Read More

Plaintiff company and defendant city entered into an agreement that plaintiff’s effluent would meet certain fluoride concentration levels; subsequently, when the city passed stricter environmental regulations in order to comply with new state laws, the company’s remedy was a breach of contract lawsuit, not a claim under the US Constitution’s contracts clause.  Read More

A car dealer’s service advisors who do not sell or service cars do not fall within the exemption from the Fair Labor Standards Act’s overtime pay requirements for a "salesman, partsman or mechanic primarily engaged in selling or servicing automobiles."  Read More

Lawsuit over whether plaintiffs were wrongly excluded from board member positions in nonprofit religious corporations that controlled a religious organization, was not barred under the ministerial exception since plaintiffs’ claims would not interfere with a religion’s freedom to choose its own ministers.  Read More

Employer did not violate California’s minimum wage laws by its policies of rounding employees’ work clock times to the nearest tenth of an hour or by allowing employees up to ten minutes uncompensated time before and after shifts in which to clock in or out.  Read More

If a plaintiff seeks only injunctive relief and prevails, he can recover attorney fees under the Consumer Legal Remedies Act despite not having given the notice and opportunity for cure which the Act requires before the plaintiff may recover damages.  Read More