California Appellate Tracker

Summary judgment for defendant casino is reversed as questions of fact exist about whether casino was a common carrier, subject to a stricter standard of care, in providing a van to transport gamblers to and from an adjoining town.  Read More

The one-year limitations period governing medical malpractice actions (CCP 340.5) governs a claim of injury suffered on a fall from a hospital  gurney, since gurney transport was under a doctor’s orders and was integral to the patient’s treatment.  Read More

The district court abused its discretion in denying plaintiff's Rule 60(b)(1) motion for relief from dismissal due to its having filed an amended complaint two days after the deadline, since there was no prejudice, no bad faith, and the short delay was attributable to a reasonable misunderstanding of the district court’s docketing practices.  Read More

Plaintiff reasonably rejected earlier settlement offers requiring general releases and nondisclosure agreements and so was properly awarded her attorney fees under the Song-Beverly Warranty Act after agreeing to a settlement lacking those provisions.  Read More

A contract's indemnity clause requiring plaintiff to indemnify defendant against all claims resulting from defendant's performance of the contract applied only to claims by third parties—and not to claims asserted by one contracting party against the other, since there was no explicit language indicating the parties intended to agree to fee-shifting in that manner.  Read More

In this car crash case, substantial evidence existed to support jury verdict in favor of defendant, after defendant testified that he mistakenly—but in his opinion, reasonably—thought he could get through intersection safely before plaintiff's car came through in a cross-direction.  Read More

In ruling on a motion for attorney fees under the Lanham Act, the district court is free to exercise its discretion in examining the totality of the circumstances to decide if the case is exceptional, including whether the suit or prelitigation conduct was frivolous, ill-motivated or objectively unreasonable.  Read More

Evidence of the amount a medical finance company paid the provider for its lien on plaintiff’s personal injury claim is properly excluded as it is only marginally relevant to the reasonable value of the medical provider’s services, and rebuttal evidence would consume too much time, distracting the jury from the central issues in the case.  Read More

An order compelling arbitration of individual wage and hour claims, dismissing class claims, and staying PAGA claims—all arising from the same factual allegations—is not a death knell order and so is not immediately appealable, since other employees may use a judgment on those claims as collateral estoppel to bring their own suits, and the continued existence of the PAGA claims… Read More

Trial court did not abuse its discretion in granting a permanent injunction against U-Haul's enforcement in California of an unlawful non-competition clause in its dealer agreements, which affected 1,000 U-Haul dealers in California as well as U-Haul's competitors, customers and the general public, since U-Haul’s proposed voluntary non-enforcement of the clause would have allowed it to re-start its former policy… Read More

Nothing in the Homeowners’ Bill of Rights requires a foreclosing party to prove, prior to foreclosure, that it has the right to foreclose; rather, the statute allows pre-foreclosure injunction actions only for violation of certain specified HBOR sections, which are enumerated in sections 2924.12 and 2924.19 of the Civil Code.  Read More

A corporation and its lawyer behaved unethically in answering a city’s validation action when both knew the corporation was suspended for non-payment of state taxes; hence, they were properly denied a private attorney general fee award despite prevailing in the action.  Read More

Legal malpractice claim filed more than a year after client’s acceptance of attorney’s withdrawal was properly dismissed as time-barred, and retainer agreement attorney fee clause was broad enough to cover a malpractice claim whether sounding in tort or contract.  Read More

Trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying defendant a pre-trial continuance based on the fact that its attorney is a member of the state legislature, since the statute upon which the continuance request was based is directory rather than mandatory, and the trial court properly found that granting the continuance would harm the plaintiff while denying it would… Read More

A claim of childhood sexual abuse brought against a government agency is exempt from the requirement of filing a government claim before suing even if the abuse is not alleged to have been committed by the agency’s employee, volunteer, representative or agent.  Read More

Uninsured, self-payor patient who paid part of hospital bill and remained liable for the rest had standing to bring, and adequately alleged Consumer Legal Remedies Act and the Unfair Competition Law claims against a hospital for charging him allegedly unconscionable prices for his emergency room treatment.  Read More

Since guarantor structured a real-estate secured loan to an affiliate for its own business reasons and guaranteed only 5% of the loan amount, there was no substantial evidence that guarantor was the principal debtor or that the transaction was a sham to avoid the anti-deficiency laws.  Read More

A class was ascertainable and should have been certified since the class was properly defined by objective criteria and its members could be identified from defendant’s records, even if those records also included an unknown number of non-class members.  Read More

Tenant's suit for breach of the warranty of habitability and constructive eviction was considered an “action on the lease contract” for purposes of attorney fee recovery under Civil Code 1717.  Read More

A hospital could not be held liable for a doctor’s malpractice on a respondeat superior theory when the hospital’s conditions of admission, which the patient signed many times in non-emergency situations, clearly disclosed that all doctors who treated patients at the hospital acted as independent contractors.  Read More