Kuigoua v. Dept. of Veterans Affairs (Cal. Ct. App. - April 17, 2024)

I'm not exactly sure why Justice Wiley decided to publish this opinion, since it seems fairly clearly to make no new law and merely holds -- consistent with legions of precedent -- that in employment cases, in which you have to exhaust your administrative remedies first before you can sue, it's not okay to list one set of facts in your administrative petition and an entirely different set of facts in your subsequent lawsuit (e.g., claims for sex discrimination at one location in the administrative petition but claims of sexual harassment at a different location in the lawsuit). Can't do that. Summary judgment.

Granted, there are some new fancy words in the opinion that aren't usually used in your run-of-the-mill employment opinions (e.g., "oppression," "scotched," "conciliate" and the like), plus a new analogy that might perhaps help explain things to some people ("Kuigoua loses this appeal because he changed horses in the middle of the stream. His agency complaint was one animal. On the far bank, however, his lawsuit emerged from the stream a different creature.). But otherwise, it's just a typical application of a set group of established legal principles to the particular facts at issue here.

Not that I particularly care if an author decides to publish an opinion that seems fairly clearly to meet none of the nine alternative standards for publication set forth in Rule 8.1105(c). Maybe a couple of trees take a hit, but otherwise, no real harm done.

Just somewhat unusual.