California Appellate Tracker

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

State statutes prohibiting licensed mental health providers from engaging in sexual orientation change efforts with minors do not abridge the religious freedom of either therapists or the minors in their care.  Read More

After trial court clerk improperly posted copy of confidential pleading that revealed plaintiff’s true name in his revenge porn lawsuit (in which plaintiffs are ordinarily permitted to proceed anonymously), the trial court compounded the error by ruling that all future filings would have to be in plaintiff’s real name.  Read More

To support an award of damages for lost earning capacity, plaintiff must introduce evidence showing the career it is reasonably probable plaintiff would have pursued but for the tortious injury and the amount plaintiff would have earned in that career.  Read More

Trial court did not abuse its discretion in requiring appellant to bear third parties’ entire attorney fees in interpleader actions triggered by respondent’s enforcement of judgment while appeal was pending as appellant could have avoided these costs by posting an appeal bond.   Read More

When a motion to dismiss raises a question of foreign law, the court may consider declarations or other "evidentiary" material regarding the content of relevant foreign law without converting the motion into a summary judgment motion; here, the Court of Appeal held that a French “astreinte” award was an enforceable foreign damage judgment, not an unenforceable penalty.  Read More

Compliance with the Government Tort Claims statute's claim presentation requirement may be alleged generally—as by checking a box on the Judicial Council form complaint stating that "Plaintiff … has complied with applicable claims statutes.”  Read More

When cases are merely related—as opposed to consolidated—transfer of one of them to a new judge based on an effective 170.6 challenge does not require or allow transfer of the other related case in which no challenge is filed.  Read More

The National Labor Relations Act did not preempt a manager’s state law wrongful termination claims, as his termination did not arguably interfere with employees’ right to organize—they had already voted to join a union when the manager was fired for goading them into unionizing.  Read More

A judgment in favor of a contractor's injured employee and against the homeowner who hired the contractor is affirmed under the “retained control exception” to the independent contractor rule, since the homeowner retained control by assuming responsibility for obtaining building permits and city inspections—one purpose of which is to assure that the work is safely carried out.  Read More

California’s Ellis Act preempts a key section of San Francisco’s Planning Code, penalizing a landlord’s withdrawal of a unit from the rental market by denying for ten years any permit to merge the withdrawn unit with any other.  Read More

Insurer is entitled to summary judgment against a claim under an auto insurance policy which the insurer had canceled before an accident, due to the insured's failure to respond within 30 days to written inquiry whether the insured wanted his driving age son to be included as an insured under the policy, since that information was reasonably necessary to underwrite… Read More

An arbitration clause excepting “any class or representative suit” from arbitration excludes from arbitration individual, as well as group, claims brought under the Private Attorney General Act (“PAGA”; Labor Code 2698 et seq).  Read More