California Appellate Tracker

A South Carolina judicial foreclosure judgment barred borrower’s California suit for wrongful foreclosure.  Read More

A letter from a state-level fire department supervisor to a county-level fire supervisor asking that plaintiff not be assigned any duty that brought him on state fire department premises was not protected speech under the Anti-SLAPP statute, and in fact it breached a settlement agreement under which plaintiff had voluntarily resigned rather than face charges of sexual assault.  Read More

USC violated common law standards of fair procedure in disciplining Doe in connection with a group sexual encounter at a fraternity party, by giving him inadequate notice of the charges against him and denying him a fair hearing.  Read More

Bishop of Episcopalian diocese lacked authority to amend the canons of the corporation sole in whose name the diocese’s property was held, so transfers of diocese property which the bishop made pursuant to his purported amendments were invalid.  Read More

A completely uncooperative father’s appeal from a juvenile court order removing a child from his custody is dismissed under the appellate disentitlement doctrine.  Read More

There was sufficient evidence to support a violation of the Fair Employment and Housing Act’s prohibition of discrimination against a person based on his association with a disabled person, when an employee's new boss purposefully scheduled him to drive later-than-usual truck routes so as to prevent him from being able to administer dialysis to his son, thus ridding the company… Read More

An employer must provide an employee a seat if the nature of the employee’s tasks at that location, objectively viewed in light of all the circumstances, reasonably permit sitting and sitting would not interfere with tasks that require standing at that location. Read More

Questions of fact prevented summary judgment on defense that plaintiff’s graphical method of presenting medical test results was functional and so not a protectable trade dress. Read More

Warships are not “products” for purposes of strict liability in tort since they are not distributed commercially; also, the “any exposure” theory is insufficient proof of causation in an asbestosis case.  Read More

California's general rule requiring automatic disqualification of counsel involved in a simultaneous conflict of interest does not apply to or require disqualification of the counsel for plaintiffs in a class action who drafted a settlement that gave named class representatives an interest in conflict with unnamed class members’ interests.   Read More

In this mixed-motive wrongful termination case, the trial court did not err in giving a jury instruction that required the plaintiff to prove that the forbidden motive was "a substantial motivating reason" for the termination.  Read More

Arbitration clause in employment agreement was not unconscionable; its reservation of the right to seek injunctive relief pending arbitration merely restated a right conferred by statute, and a non-exclusive list of only employee claims did not make the otherwise bilateral arbitration clause one-sided.   Read More

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A bankruptcy appellate panel is not a court established by an Act of Congress and so cannot issue a writ of mandate under the All Writs Act.  Read More

The trial court correctly vacated the portion of the arbitrator's initial award which awarded attorney fees to defendant employer for defeating plaintiff employee's claims for overtime and meal break compensation which she claimed she was entitled to as a non-exempt employee under California's Labor Code.  Read More

When the public entity owner stopped deducting retention amounts midway through a project but did not pay the prime contractor retention amounts already withheld, prime contractor was not required to pay subcontractors retention amounts it had previously withheld.  Read More

When a testator’s trust provided the residue was to be split evenly among three children, but one of them was not to bear liability for taxes, the trial court erred in readjusting the children’s percentage shares of the residue to equalize the taxation burden.  Read More

The attorney and mental health care worker certificates of merit that an adult older than 26 must file to bring a claim for childhood sexual abuse need not be verified but must state facts as to each defendant sufficient to allow the trial court to assess the suit’s potential merit.  Read More

Statistical evidence may be used to prove liability in a class action if it would be admissible to prove liability in an individual suit on the same claim.  Read More

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