Monday, April 09, 2007

Mansour v. Degas (Cal. Ct. App. - April 9, 2007)

Weird.

Rarely do you see the Court of Appeal depublish its own opinion. Especially when, as here, nothing happened in the interim -- no intervening decision, no petition for rehearing, no request for depublication. Nothing.

Admittedly, when I read the original opinion, I didn't think that it was anything special, or paticularly worthy of publication. But that's hardly unusual.

I wonder -- and admittedly I'm just speculating here -- whether there wasn't a clerical error involved; e.g., that Justice Boland originally intended the opinion to be unpublished, but that someone made a mistake and that it accordingly ended up getting published. And that, when Justice Boland found out, he corrected the error. Or that, perhaps, the agreement of the justices at conference allowed a unanimous opinion, and in the form circulated prior to oral argument, but only if it was unpublished.

The alternative just seems silly -- that, upon receipt of nothing, the justices concluded, sua sponte, "Hey, you remember that opinion we circulated last week. I was sitting in bed last night and realized that it really didn't merit publication. Everyone agree? Good."

Maybe that happens. And, if it does, great. Go ahead and depublish. It just seems implausible.