Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Fortner v. Superior Court (Cal. Ct. Appp. - July 17, 2013)

You would think it would be fairly obvious that you cannot charge someone in California for a spontaneous assault that transpired in Hawaii.  But apparently it takes an opinion in the Court of Appeal.

For civil procedure folks, this result seems self-evident.  Surely you could not sue someone for this offense in California based merely on the fact that the assault might have an effect in California.

Criminal and civil jurisdiction are not the same.  (Though, ironically, it is only criminal venue that is expressly circumscribed in the Constitution.). But the result here is the same.

There are crimes that take place in multiple jurisdictions.  But this is not one of them.