California Appellate Tracker

The Court of Appeals lacked jurisdiction over a non-final order denying motion to compel arbitration because the motion was brought under California’s Arbitration Act, not the Federal Arbitration Act.  Read More

District court properly denied equitable relief to plaintiff whose attorney filed a claim challenging a forfeiture one day late, since this error was the result of ordinary negligence rather than an extraordinary circumstance that would warrant relief.  Read More

An attorney engaged in debt collection and violated the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act by sending a homeowner a letter demanding payment of delinquent homeowners association dues and threatening to file a lien on the homeowner’s property unless the dues were paid within 25 days, thus overshadowing the FDCPA-required notice that the homeowner had 30 days to demand validation of… Read More

Triable issues of fact existed as to whether defendant employer had terminated plaintiff’s employment in retaliation for exercising her rights under California’s Family and Medical Leave Act.  Read More

Plaintiffs who purchased applications from Apple's App Store are direct purchasers from Apple and can sue it for monopolizing the market for distribution of applications that run on the iPhone.  Read More

Because no statute, regulation or contract provision required defendant to use a progress charting tool known as an earned value management system, defendant did not violate the False Claims Act, as plaintiff alleged, by an implied false certification that it used that tool.  Read More

Neither the psychotherapist-patient privilege nor the state constitutional right of privacy is absolute, and consequently neither of these defeats the statutory requirement that mental health professionals report their patients to the police or child welfare agencies when the patients disclose that they have accessed child pornography through electronic or digital media.  Read More

Statements an attorney made to news media about a suit he filed on behalf of a client were protected speech under the Anti-SLAPP statute because the lawsuit and the attorney's statements about it involved matters of public interest such as the allegation that the defendants in that suit had implanted phony spinal implants in thousands of patients.  Read More

Plaintiff company and defendant city entered into an agreement that plaintiff’s effluent would meet certain fluoride concentration levels; subsequently, when the city passed stricter environmental regulations in order to comply with new state laws, the company’s remedy was a breach of contract lawsuit, not a claim under the US Constitution’s contracts clause.  Read More

A car dealer’s service advisors who do not sell or service cars do not fall within the exemption from the Fair Labor Standards Act’s overtime pay requirements for a "salesman, partsman or mechanic primarily engaged in selling or servicing automobiles."  Read More

Lawsuit over whether plaintiffs were wrongly excluded from board member positions in nonprofit religious corporations that controlled a religious organization, was not barred under the ministerial exception since plaintiffs’ claims would not interfere with a religion’s freedom to choose its own ministers.  Read More

Employer did not violate California’s minimum wage laws by its policies of rounding employees’ work clock times to the nearest tenth of an hour or by allowing employees up to ten minutes uncompensated time before and after shifts in which to clock in or out.  Read More

If a plaintiff seeks only injunctive relief and prevails, he can recover attorney fees under the Consumer Legal Remedies Act despite not having given the notice and opportunity for cure which the Act requires before the plaintiff may recover damages.  Read More

Even if the trial court lacks subject matter jurisdiction, it may grant the defendant's special Anti-SLAPP motion to strike und award the defendant attorney fees, since lack of jurisdiction is one of many possible non-merits-related reasons for holding, at the second stage of the Anti-SLAPP analysis, that the plaintiff has not shown a probability of success on the merits.  Read More

A landlord whom a local ordinance bars from collecting rent due to building and housing code violations in the rented premises also cannot evict the tenant for non-payment of rent.  Read More

The trial court correctly denied an employer's motion to compel arbitration of an employee's complaint under the Private Attorney General Act, since an individual employee's PAGA claim is not severable from the claim on behalf of the general public.  Read More

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 does not require that a plaintiff demonstrate that it is administratively feasible to identify class members as a prerequisite to class certification.  Read More

A Court of Appeals lacks appellate jurisdiction over a order remanding a case that was removed based on federal question jurisdictional grounds, rather than on diversity grounds under CAFA.  Read More

Since an employer may not legally require an employee to be on-duty or on-call during a rest break, defendant could not require its security guards to keep their radios on during their rest breaks and respond to an emergency call if one occurred during the rest break.  Read More

When a contract’ attorney fee clause is broad enough to cover tort as well as contract claims, the defendant is the prevailing party entitled to a fee award on the tort, but not the contract, claims when the plaintiff voluntarily dismisses the action before trial.  Read More