California Appellate Tracker

A stay order entered by a district court is appealable as a final judgment under 28 USC 1291 if it effectively places the plaintiff out of court.  An indefinite stay to be ended only upon the occurrence of an external event that is not time delimited.  If the stay lasts 18 months or longer, the stay is not automatically appealable,… Read More

Lawyers who owned an undercapitalized debt collection firm were properly held to be alter egos of the debt collection firm for purposes of liability under the FDCPA and the UCL as well as for attorney fee under CCP 1021.5. Read More

The trial court did not abuse its discretion in bifurcating and trying first plaintiff's UCL claim even though the claim was based on an alleged FDCPA violation and defendant was entitled to a jury trial of the FDCPA claim.  The UCL claim is equitable.  Equitable first is the rule in California.  Also, that procedure serves the UCL's purpose of affording… Read More

Civ. Code 5655(a) provides that payments a homeowner makes to an HOA for delinquent assessments must to allocated first to repay the delinquent assessments and only thereafter to pay attorney fees, costs, and interest incurred in connection with the HOA's attempt to collect the delinquent assessments.  This decision holds that the protections afforded by that section benefit the public, in… Read More

Plaintiff obtained a CGL policy from defendant which included an exclusion from coverage for injuries suffered by employees of a contractor.  The exclusion did not define "contractor."  The decision holds that the term is ambiguous.  It could mean anyone contracted to work on a construction project, as the insurer contended.  Or it could mean anyone with whom the insured had… Read More

Lyft driver suffered an unprovoked knife attack by a passenger, who, he later discovered that the passenger had a criminal history.  Held, Lyft does not owe its drivers a duty of care to run criminal background checks on passengers it offers to its drivers.  It would be too burdensome to run such checks on all passengers.  And the rare random… Read More

The CFPB's funding mechanism is constitutional.  Congress acts in accordance with the Appropriations Clause if it enacts a measure that identifies the source from which money may be drawn for a specified purpose.  Congress need not set the amount; it can allow the executive or agency draw on the authorized source up to a stated cap.  The appropriation also need… Read More

Affirming a summary judgment, this opinion finds that the city was immune from liability under Gov. Code 831.4 on plaintiff's claim that he tripped over a wire cable hanging between two posts on either side of the entrance to a path down to a lake, designed to keep vehicles from using the path.  The path was used for the recreational… Read More

Affirming denial of class certification in this case charging Folsom with a public and private nuisance of furnishing its customers with too acidic, chlorinated water that corroded copper pipes, the court holds that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in finding that individual questions as to liability predominated.  Folsom's own expert studies showed only that its water "could"… Read More

Education Code 24500 grants the California State Teachers Retirement System a right of subrogation to the rights of a teacher to whom the Retirement System has paid disability retirement benefits as a result of injuries the teacher sustained by reason of a third party's tort.  As with an employer's payment of worker's compensation benefits or CalPERS payment of disability retirement,… Read More

Plaintiff alleged a hostile work environment claim against her employer, alleging a single course of harassing behavior over a two year period that began before she filed her bankruptcy petition and ended afterwards. Because plaintiff could have brought the claim before bankruptcy, the entire claim, including the post-bankruptcy damages, were property of the bankrupt estate and could be prosecuted only… Read More

California law does not recognize the concept of constructive termination in the context of ordinary commercial contracts between business entities.  The social policies that allow constructive termination in the employment and landlord-tenant contexts do not apply to ordinary commercial contracts.  Also, the contract in this case specifically provided four means of terminating the contract, none of which involved a constructive… Read More

Government entities and actors are free to speak and do so forcefully on issues of public importance.  However, government actors may not use their governmental powers via veiled threats of adverse governmental action to coerce private parties to suppress speech that the government actors view unfavorably.  Here, the NRA alleged a viable claim for such coerced third party suppression of… Read More

Under the Dodd-Frank Act, 12 U. S. C.§ 25b(b)(1)(B), the National Bank Act preempts state law, as applied to a national bank, only if (a) the state law discriminates in favor of state banks and against national banks, or (b) “prevents or significantly interferes with the exercise by the national bank of its powers,” the standard articulated in Barnett Bank… Read More

Unless it has actual knowledge of a vendor's employee's propensity to engage in such conduct, a regional center administering services for developmentally disabled persons does not owe a duty of care to the "consumer" of those services to protect the consumer from the vendor's employee's sexual assault and hence cannot be held liable for such an assault.  Even though the… Read More

Although the interplay between CCP 664.6's two sentences is not entirely clear, this decision holds that if a settlement is entered into before the court and a motion to enforce the settlement is brought while the action is still pending, the court retains jurisdiction to rule on the motion to enforce the settlement even if the parties have not agreed… Read More

The trial court abused its discretion in denying ex-wife's application to renew a DVRO injunction against ex-husband without properly evaluating the three factors set out in Ritchie v. Konrad (2004) 115 Cal.App.4th 1275:  The factual predicate for the original DVRO.  Any significant change in circumstances that occurred after the DVRO was issued.  Whether, and how much, the DVRO burdens the… Read More

Describing but not resolving several areas of ambiguity and conflicting authority in applying H&S Code 1799.110, this decision holds instead that a nurse anesthetist and trauma unit nurse lacked the specialized knowledge required to opine on the standard of care applicable to an intensive care unit neurosurgeon deciding whether a severe traumatic brain injury requires immediate surgical intervention, whether that… Read More

A judge's ruling on an application by a plaintiff over 40 years old for permission to sue for childhood sexual abuse under CCP 340.1(e), (h), and (m) is not a determination of a contested issue of fact and so does not prevent the later served defendant from exercising a 170.6 challenge against the judge who ruled on the application. Read More

This decision affirms an order denying enforcement of the arbitration clause in USC's employment contract on the ground that it is unconscionable in applying to any dispute (whether or not arising from the employment relationship), in being of perpetual duration (providing that it continued in effect after termination of employment unless both parties agreed otherwise), and lacking mutuality in requiring… Read More