California Appellate Tracker

Oakland lacked standing to bring a price-fixing antitrust claim against Oakland Raiders and other NFL teams arising out of the Raiders' move to Las Vegas.  A finding of antitrust standing requires a balancing of the nature of the plaintiff’s alleged injury, the directness of the injury, the speculative measure of the harm, the risk of duplicative recovery, and the complexity… Read More

A state or local agency's failure to protect may give rise to a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claim under the state-created danger exception when the state affirmatively places the plaintiff in danger by acting with deliberate indifference to a known or obvious danger.  Deliberate indifference is judged by a subjective standard.  Here, defendant arguably displayed deliberate indifference in not keeping… Read More

Before filing a PAGA suit, a plaintiff must send a pre-suit notice to the Labor and Workforce Development Agency and the employer describing the facts and theories to support the alleged violation. Lab. Code 2699.3.  This decision holds that at least when the notice reveals a violation that is likely to have affected more workers than the individual prospective plaintiff… Read More

The plaintiff's alleged failure to give adequate pre-suit notice to the Labor and Workforce Development Agency and the employer before filing a PAGA suit is an affirmative defense which the employer waives either by not pleading it in the answer or by, even if so pleaded, not pursuing it as a defense by pretrial motion or at trial. Read More

Lab. Code 226.3 provides for heightened civil penalties in connection with an employer's violation of wage statement requirements of Lab. Code 226.  Disagreeing with Raines v. Coastal Pacific Food Distributors, Inc. (2018) 23 Cal.App.5th 667, this decision holds that by its plain language, section 226.3 allows for assessment of those heightened civil penalties only when the employer fails to provide… Read More

California's wage statement law (Lab. Code 226) applies to workers based in California who do not work half the time in a different state.  Here, the plaintiff airline crew members were based in California, beginning and ending each sequence of flights there.  They did not spend half their work  time in any other state, so California's wage statement law applied… Read More

When parties agree on the material terms of a contract with the intention to later reduce it to a formal writing, failure to complete the formal writing does not negate the existence of the initial contract.  Also, if the parties do not agree on the content of the formal writing (for example because one party wants to include something not… Read More

Under Corp. Code 15908.02(b), majority partners may file a motion for a compelled appraisal and buyout of a minority partner who has sued for involuntary dissolution of a limited partnership.  Once the motion is granted, the buyout procedure supplants the minority partner's dissolution claim.  This decision holds that once the court has entered an order granting the motion for a… Read More

In ruling on a motion for approval of a settlement of a PAGA claim, the trial court should apply the "fair, adequate and reasonable" standard applied to approval of class action settlements. Because many of the factors used to evaluate class action settlements bear on a settlement’s fairness—including the strength of the plaintiff’s case, the risk, the stage of the… Read More

Disagreeing with Turrietta v. Lyft, Inc. (2021) 2021 Cal. App. LEXIS 815, this decision holds that the plaintiff in one PAGA action is sufficiently aggrieved by an unfair settlement of a different plaintiff's parallel PAGA suit to have standing to appeal from the judgment following approval of settlement in the other action--so long as the appellant became a party to… Read More

A school owes a duty to protect students from sexual abuse by school employees, even if the school does not have actual knowledge of a particular employee’s history of committing, or propensity to commit, such abuse.  However, to hold a school liable for failure to report suspected child abuse as required by Pen. Code, § 11164 et seq., the plaintiff… Read More

The trial court did not abuse its discretion in awarding costs against plaintiff under CCP 2033.420 for having denied defendant's requests of admission regarding the breach of oral promise claim alleged in the complaint.  The evidence at trial showed that plaintiff could not have maintained a good faith belief, at the time he denied those requests, that he would prevail… Read More

On a motion to compel arbitration, the moving party bears a slight initial burden of proving the existence of an arbitration agreement and can satisfy that burden simply by attaching the signed agreement to the motion to compel, without authenticating it.  However, if the plaintiff disputes that he or she entered into the agreement and submits a declaration saying he… Read More

The trial court abused its discretion in dismissing this action as a sanction under CCP 128.7 on the ground that there was no reasonable ground for thinking it was not barred by the statute of limitations.  The action sought to quiet title to the property that the plaintiff had purchased in 2008 with knowledge of prior agreements purportedly assigning "coverage… Read More

A breach of contract is not "wrongful conduct" sufficient to support a claim for interference with prospective economic relationships.  Here, plaintiff narrowed its claim to interference based on the defendant's breach of a nondisclosure agreement.  Held, the trial court erred in submitting that claim to the jury since it was the court's responsibility to determine whether the alleged conduct was… Read More

The trial court correctly excluded most of a declaration by Synchrony Bank's litigation assistant which attempted to show that plaintiff had agreed to the arbitration provision of the bank's credit card agreement.  Though the declaration attached copies of account statements and different versions of the credit card agreement containing the arbitration clause, it did not attach any record showing the… Read More

This decision affirms a demurrer to numerous claims by sellers against eBay for various charges and other policies it enforces against them under its user agreement.  Although the user agreement is an adhesion contract, the decision holds that it and eBau's policies are published on its website, and though they are lengthy, sellers are under no time pressure to agree. … Read More

Aiding and abetting requires not only actual knowledge of the specific wrongdoing allegedly aided, but also a conscious decision to participate in tortious activity for the purpose of assisting another in performing a wrongful act.  That is, the defendant must have acted with the intent of facilitating commission of the tort. Read More

The defendant bail bond agency violated Cal. Code Regs., tit. 10, sec. 2079 by soliciting the plaintiff to make bail for her employee and co-defendant in a criminal possession of fireworks prosecution.  The cited section forbids bail bondsmen from soliciting bail from other than the accused and his or her immediate family unless that person has, without prior solicitation by… Read More

Plaintiff insured's losses due to COVID-19-related restrictions on its business were not covered by the business interruption insurance policy defendant had issued to it.  To be covered, the business interruption had to result from physical loss of or damage to property at the insured location. Instead, the business interruption resulted from county closure orders that were issued due to the… Read More