California Appellate Tracker

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

A bar and dance club owed a duty of care to protect patrons against sexual assault in its bathroom areas; a unisex bathroom with ADA stalls that had floor to ceiling walls and lockable doors, together with the sexually charged atmosphere of the club and lax security guard policy, indicated there was a clearly foreseeable risk of nonconsensual sex in… Read More

Since the policy clearly allows it to do so, an insurer breaches neither its policy nor the duty of good faith in repairing rather than paying the value of a nearly new vehicle seriously damaged in an auto accident, even though the repaired vehicle’s market value is substantially lower than the vehicle’s pre-accident value.  Read More

In this trademark infringement case, plaintiff raised trial issues of fact sufficient to overcome summary judgment by showing the defendant sold its competing vodka under labels that a reasonable consumer might find confusingly similar to plaintiff’s labels, both featuring puckered lips, colored to match the vodka’s flavoring. Read More

Trial court erred in dismissing beneficiary’s challenge to trust amendment, allegedly signed under undue influence, based on another beneficiary’s disclaimer which left plaintiff’s share of the trust unaffected by the challenged amendment.   Read More

For purposes of the Consumer Fraud and Abuse Act, both Facebook and its individual users had to consent before defendant could have its users initiate Facebook messages inviting others to use defendant’s website; the consent of the individual users alone was insufficient.  Read More

Denial of 5-year renewal of wife’s injunction against abusive ex-husband was an abuse of discretion given the ex-husband’s history of abusing the wife and children.  Read More

Plaintiff’s unsuccessful federal 1983 suit against the Franchise Tax Board for publishing plaintiff’s name as one of the top 500 tax debtors barred later state law suit against the FTB for that same act.  Read More