California Appellate Tracker

Andrew Noble offers further thoughts on this important case. Read More

In a design defect case, industry custom is not admissible to prove the design was safe or the manufacturer acted reasonably in adopting it, but may be admissible as other Barker v. Lull factors in assessing risk vs. benefit of challenging design. Read More

Washington's unlawful detainer statute violates due process insofar as it permits summary issuance of a writ of restitution without hearing if the landlord claims non-payment of rent and the tenant fails to file a timely, sworn written statement in dispute. Read More

Class action settlement and judgment in a case brought under the California Labor Code had res judicata effect on a subsequent class action involving same employees and same employer based on the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. Read More

A tenant was entitled to judgment in this unlawful detainer action because the landlord’s 3-day notice to quit included in the sum demanded to cure the rent default a $50 late fee and the landlord failed to prove at trial the fee was not an illegal penalty. Read More

Defendant was entitled to summary judgment because it was the only party who obtained expert declarations on the elements of a standard of care and causation of damage, neither of which could be established solely from plaintiff’s own testimony. Read More

A homeowner should have been allowed to amend his complaint to allege that the party foreclosing on his house lacked any interest in his loan since that the prior owner of the loan had already assigned it to someone else before executing the assignment to the foreclosing party. Read More

In a class action under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, statutory damages are limited to the lesser of $500,000 or 1% of the defendant's net worth, and the net worth calculation is the plaintiff’s burden to prove just as all the other elements are. Read More

To appeal from the Labor Commissioner's ruling on an employee’s wage claim, the employer must post a bond in the amount of the award; failure to do so results in dismissal of the appeal unless the employer is indigent. Read More

The Investigative Consumer Reporting Agencies Act is not unconstitutionally vague merely because some types of consumer reports fall within its scope as well as within the scope of the Consumer Credit Reporting Agencies Act, and an employer seeking any information about a consumer other than creditworthiness can easily comply with both statutes simply by complying with the stricter requirements of… Read More

An arbitrator's “partial final award” determining only that the arbitration agreement permitted the claimant to move for class certification is not an "award" which a court could confirm or vacate, although the trial court's order "denying" the petition to vacate the award was itself immediately appealable. Read More

A forum selection clause that applies to claims that "arising out of" a contract are limited to those relating to the interpretation and performance of the contract itself, whereas a clause that applies to claims "relating to" the contract encompasses disputes that reference the agreement or have some “logical or causal connection” to the agreement; here, the clause in the… Read More

A defendant, against whom a district attorney had filed an unfair competition action, was not entitled to a transfer of the case to a “neutral” county—i.e., a county other than the DA’s county. Read More

In this contested hearing on trustee’s accounting, the trust did not confer absolute discretion on the trustee, so his exercise of discretion was to be judged by a "reasonableness" standard, pursuant to which the trial court properly surcharged the trustee for using trust funds to pay for the beneficiary's ordinary living expenses, when the trust said the corpus was to… Read More

Code of Civil Procedure 1714.10, which requires prior court approval before filing a complaint charging an attorney with conspiring with his client in an attempt to contest or compromise a claim or dispute, can be invoked even if the complaint does not use the word conspiracy, so long as it alleges joint tortious action. Read More

Defendant motorcycle dealer could not enforce an arbitration clause in financing agreement between motorcycle buyer and lender, as a dealer is not an express third party beneficiary of the arbitration clause. Read More

The trial court erred in failing to award the plaintiff the value of home health care and other household services provided to plaintiff’s decedent before his death by several of his children, as well as the value of nursing services that the decedent would have rendered to his wife had he not been injured by the defendant. Read More

The Public Records Act does not require a governmental agency to create new records to produce pursuant to a request, but only requires the production of otherwise existing governmental records in certain circumstances. Read More

The workers' compensation system pre-empts tort claims by workers against employers’ utilization reviewers, who are empowered to modify or deny treatment requests. Read More

Plaintiff avoided summary judgment in a False Claims Act suit by showing defendant expressly agreed, as a condition of receiving federal student aid, not to pay incentive compensation to its recruiters, but then violated that agreement and still submitted claims for student aid. Read More