California Appellate Tracker

A plaintiff’s discrimination and retaliation suit against the University where she was a medical resident in anesthesiology did not arise from the University's protected activity in conducting proceedings leading to her discipline and ultimate termination, but rather from the University's allegedly wrongful (and unprotected) antecedent conduct in discriminating and retaliating against plaintiff, which in turn led to the protected disciplinary… Read More

Plaintiff’s one-year limitations period for bringing suit after the California Department of Fair Employment & Housing issued a right-to-sue letter should be equitably tolled for a year beyond the EEOC’s issuance of its own right-to-sue  letter, because plaintiff reasonably relied on the DFEH letter’s incorrect statement that the limitations period would be tolled while EEOC investigated the claim.  Read More

Trial court properly denied Anti-SLAPP motion brought by defendants—JAMS and one of its mediators—since plaintiff’s lawsuit alleging misrepresentations in the mediator’s website biography arose from defendants’ advertising of services for the purpose of enticing purchasers, thus falling within the CCP 415.17(c) exception to the Anti-SLAPP statute.  Read More

A district court scheduling order was not an appealable order since it did not finally decide the dispositive issue of whether to compel arbitration.  Read More

In this wage and hour dispute, defendant was not entitled to a writ of mandate to overturn a district court scheduling order setting trial on the issue of whether plaintiff’s contracts were employment agreements in interstate commerce and thus exempt from the Federal Arbitration Act, since defendant has an adequate remedy on appeal from any order denying its motion to… Read More

Plaintiffs did not allege facts sufficient to show that defendant landowners impliedly dedicated a fire road over their land to public use, since fire roads are only temporary easements and do not alert the landowner to any risk that they could be surrendering property rights, and there was insufficient evidence that the road was constantly used by hikers.  Read More

The arbitrator, rather than the court, determines whether an arbitration agreement permits classwide arbitration unless the agreement clearly assigns that decision to the court.  Read More

Popular soft-porn star adduced prima facie proof that in publishing her picture with an article about HIV in the L.A. porn industry the defendant  news website edited her picture and its caption, making it more likely that the article would imply plaintiff had HIV, thus overcoming defendant’s Anti-SLAPP motion in her defamation suit.  Read More

When a home loan borrower defends a lender’s suit, based on a demand for rescission under the Truth in Lending Act, the lender’s lien is not automatically invalidated; instead, the court must decide whether correct TILA disclosures were given and whether the borrower should be required to tender back the borrowed sums before the lien is invalidated.  Read More

The federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act’s five-day debt validation notice requirement applies not only to the first debt collector attempting to collect a given debt, but also to each later debt collector attempting to collect that same debt.  Read More

The trial court properly denied a general contractor’s promissory estoppel claim as the general could not show it reasonably relied on the defendant subcontractor’s bid price while seeking to renegotiate the accompanying conditions to the sub’s bid.  Read More

Defendant’s conduct of litigation for 17 months, including a motion to dismiss, extensive discovery, and a deposition, waived the right to invoke arbitration.  Read More

Approval of a class action settlement in a case of alleged false advertising of weight loss products is reversed because the claim form misinformed class members as to key aspects of the settlement agreement that had been approved by the court.  Read More

Tenant was the prevailing party, entitled to an attorney fee award under LA’s Rent Escrow Account Program, when the landlord voluntarily dismissed an unlawful detainer action to recover possession of property that was subject to the Program.  Read More

A mandated reporter of elder abuse is immune from liability for having filed an affidavit in support of a citizen’s arrest of a worker suspected of having stolen property from nursing home residents.  Read More

The Eminent Domain Law’s procedure for allowing condemning authorities to perform pre-condemnation testing of property meets state and federal constitutional requirements so long as it is reformed to allow jury determination of the property owner’s damages from the testing.  Read More

Defendant could not plead the Fifth Amendment to avoid his obligation to collect and pay business taxes to City of San Jose for his marijuana co-op.  Read More

In this derivative suit, shareholders failed to allege facts sufficient to show futility of demanding that the board of directors remedy corporation's alleged bribery of foreign officials, since complaint did not sufficiently aver that insiders controlled a majority of the board or that board members likely faced personal liability for the corporation’s acts.  Read More

Trademark assignments and trademark co-existence agreements are generally enforceable; here the assignee of a co-existence agreement had prior rights over the assignee under a later assignment of the trademark.  Read More

Delayed discovery cannot be used to circumvent a limitations period triggered by events giving prospective plaintiffs constructive knowledge of their claim, such as, here, the 180-day limitations period for suing to challenge a public entity’s failure to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act.  Read More