California Appellate Report

It's Fix The City versus the City of Los Angeles. And . . . the City wins. Both below and on appeal . So no fixing the city. It's on...

Nothing published (yet, at least) from the Ninth Circuit or California Court of Appeal today, so I thought I would briefly mention this publ...

I really, really like everything about this opinion. It's equitable. It's reasonable. It's fair. It shows compassion. It's ...

Fifteen years in prison seems about right to me for this years-long, ten-figure Medicare fraud. Even without the additional two years that t...

The Ninth Circuit delivers some bad news today to a segment of the plaintiff's bar. Particularly that segment located in Montana. It...

Strange language in this opinion . Defendant, who was convicted of murder and sentenced to 50 years in prison, files a petition under the Ra...

Judge Bennett has a point in his dissent . Unlike the majority, he thinks that the district court's legal error at sentencing was harmle...

I don't understand the plaintiff's strategy here. Regardless, whether I understand it or not, it didn't work. Plaintiff files a ...

In affirming a five-year sentence for threatening to bomb a state courthouse, Judge McKeown's opinion today correctly notes that: ...

Yes, the trial judge wrongly (and inexplicably) failed to state on the record, or anywhere, why it denied defense counsel's objection to...

This is a personal jurisdiction case , which somewhat interests me on the merits, but what caught my eye was actually the caption. The princ...

You advertise on Craigslist to illegally sell one thousand fentanyl pills and get busted by an undercover cop on your way to sell them to hi...

I'm not sure that the California Supreme Court would agree with today's opinion by the Court of Appeal , which reverses a conviction...

Justice Baltodano writes a very concise and punchy opinion that coherently explains why the Court of Appeal comes out the way it does here....

I understand the facial appeal, I guess, but I still can't believe that the trial court got this one wrong . Defendant is accused of kid...

The Court of Appeal publishes this opinion to confirm, amongst other things, that comparing the criminal defendant to a dog at trial is appa...

Wait. What is this?! The Ninth Circuit expressly holds today -- albeit in dicta -- that I'm not permitted to join the "Church of S...

This seems a pretty successful business model, actually. Find companies who commit technical violations of California's background check...

Check out this Song-Beverly (i.e., automobile "lemon law") opinion from the 4/1 , which the Court of Appeal decides today to publi...

Hat tip: If you're representing someone on appeal, know the appellate rules. Otherwise this might happen . Justice Chou explains the sit...

The Court of Appeal holds that ZipCar -- which rents cars remotely with no in-person contact -- has no duty to make sure that the person re...

I'm glad that the Court of Appeal came out this way. If you feel that someone's an unsafe driver -- perhaps due to their age, medica...

Every single word of Justice Liu's (unanimous) opinion here makes total sense . Which is not surprising, since you'd reach exactly t...

There are a couple of tangentially interesting things about this opinion. But there's also one thing that is, in my view, demonstrably ...

I agree with Justice Bendix that the appellant forfeited any objection to the way prospective jurors were seated in this matter. But partic...

The Ninth Circuit has been fairly silent recently; only one published opinion in the last six days. Fortunately, the Court of Appeal is stil...

I liked this opinion by Justice Goldman . Really well done. It's a divorce case in which the wife says that the date of separation is 20...

The Court of Appeal sanctions Las Vegas attorney (and member of the California bar) T. Matthew Phillips $25,000 based upon a series of voci...

Today the 2/4 proves that time travel is indeed possible: "THE COURT:*  It is ordered that the opinion filed herein on December 22, 20...

I'm conflicted on who I would have wanted to win in this one . All I know is that there are definitely big names involved. It's tech...

The police conduct a traffic stop, find an illegal weapon, and arrest the driver. The driver asserts that the stop was pretextual, and the o...

Here's the lingo that my teenage children would likely employ after reading this opinion : Sus. It's not that the Mendocino Railway ...

I agree with the overwhelming majority of what Justice Hoffstadt says here . Indeed, at least facially, I'm stunned that the plaintiff g...

This is a bit scary . Not because of the actual holding of the case, which involves whether the government can introduce a particular prior ...

One of the things I somewhat like about published California Court of Appeal opinions is that they don't list the author until the very ...