It's a Tale of Two Cities in the California judiciary as we begin 2019.
The one published opinion from the Ninth Circuit thus far is this one -- an 86-page, single-spaced tome from the en banc court that's all about how much in attorney's fees someone gets from being wrongfully included on the federal government's "no fly" list. Is it $125/hour (the usual cap)? More because the government litigated in bad faith? Should the hours spent on one claim be recoverable when granting relief on a different claim made that claim moot? The Ninth Circuit waxes poetic on these and other issues in 86 dense pages that includes a partial dissent. Big, fat reading.
Meanwhile, on the California state side, the only thing published we have is this one. It's four pages. Double spaced. That basically says as fast as one can say it that when there's a 30-day stay on move-away orders (here, letting one divorced parent move to Israel with the kids), that actually means 30 days. Not 15. Not exactly dense reading. Extraordinarily straightforward. (Indeed, once the Court of Appeal decided to hear the writ and stayed the trial court's order, the prevailing party stipulated below that she wouldn't leave until the 30 days expired on December 7, 2018. So the whole thing's sort of moot at this point. But the Court of Appeal nonetheless issued its opinion on December 6th and then published it today.)
So choose your poison in 2019. Want to read an incredibly complicated, lengthy opinion about which multiple people disagree? Or a nice little short one that's pretty simple?
Up to you.
