Cardenas v. LAUSD (Cal. Ct. App. - May 11, 2-026)

Woe is you.

Appellants briefed the case and were in the 2/5 (Second District, Division 5). They were likely fairly happy with that; as you probably know, it's a fairly well-respected group of justices.

Then, after the initial briefing was finished, on October 15, in an entirely different appellate case, there was a recusal in the 2/8. So that case got transferred to the 2/5.

In return, "to equalize workload," the Court of Appeal transferred this case to the 2/8. (None of this is in the opinion, by the way -- it instead comes from the appellate docket.)

That's a different panel, of course. With its own personalities. Including Justice Wiley.

As a direct result, you now see this two-page opinion. Authored by Justice Wiley. An opinion that you're more likely to see in the 2/8 than the 2/5.

That opinion reads, in its entirety:

"The trial court granted summary judgments against Jose Cardenas and his 21 fellow plaintiffs. This group appeals but has forfeited its objections to the summary judgments. The group’s opening brief asserts facts supported only by citation to its briefing in the trial court. That trial court briefing also cites no record evidence. We affirm on grounds of forfeiture.

Cardenas and the fellow plaintiffs were school safety officers, school police officers, police detectives, or other school security personnel. We refer to the group as Cardenas. The employer, the Los Angeles Unified School District, required vaccinations during the Covid-19 pandemic. Cardenas did not want to comply. Claiming religious objections, Cardenas sued the school district.

There were several bases for summary judgment against Cardenas. One was that accommodating religious objections would impose an undue hardship on the school district: unvaccinated employees would imperil students by exposing them to disease.

On appeal, Cardenas’s opening brief sets forth the supposed facts of the case by citing only to three pages of his trial court brief opposing the school district’s motion for summary judgment. These three trial court pages themselves contain no record citations. They are just three pages of something Cardenas’s same lawyer wrote in the past. On none of these pages is a citation to record evidence. Nothing is under penalty of perjury.

This appellate practice violates the cardinal rule that appellate briefs must fairly summarize the facts and must support factual assertions with record citations. [Cite] The purpose of this rule is to allow courts to decide the appeal by locating and examining the key record evidence. [Cite] Appellate records can, of course, be massive; simply asserting “it is somewhere in there” is no good. And the decisive issue can be the proper interpretation of a possibly ambiguous bit of testimony from a deposition or declaration. [Cite] Sometimes the proper interpretation of a single sentence or word decides everything.

Because appellate courts commonly must grapple with intricate details within a sizeable case record, we need record citations to get us started on this exacting work. Failing to give us the essential appellate material forfeits the argument. [Cite] We affirm the judgment and award costs to the respondent."

Could a similar opinion have been written by a different panel? Of course it could.

It's just somewhat more likely -- and predictable -- here.

P.S. - It's at least small solace that the only lawyer who's on the brief for the appellant no longer works for that firm, and instead moved to Morgan & Morgan. So he's not around to have to explain this one to his (now former) bosses.

J.N. v. Goldberg (Cal. Ct. App. - May 11, 2026)

There were no published opinions until late yesterday, but this one finally came out.

It's a great opinion for anyone who wants to file frivolous motions or complaints. As active litigators well know, under the Court Reservation System used in Los Angeles and several other counties, you have to reserve a hearing date and then file the underlying motion within three days of that reservation (or some other set number of days in other counties). Failure to do so vacates the hearing. As a result, you've got to have your motion ready (or nearly ready) to file when you reserve your date.

That's usually no problem.

But with sanctions motions under Section 128.5, as you likely know, you've got to give the other side a 21-day safe harbor notice period. You've got to (1) serve the motion on the other side, (2) wait 21 days, and (3) then file the motion.

This is typically no problem; what's usually done if that you prepare your sanctions motion, serve it on the other side with a blank hearing date (because you can't get one yet), and then after the 21 days has expired, you file and serve the motion (again) with the noticed hearing date.

The Court of Appeal, however, holds that this is improper, and reverses the $19,000+ sanction award here. The panel holds that if you leave the hearing date blank in your initial notice copy -- which you're required to do, since you can't get a hearing date -- that's insufficient under Section 128.5, so you can't get sanctions.

The Court of Appeal recognizes, albeit implicitly, that this means that parties can never get sanctions under Section 128.5 in Los Angeles or similar counties. Too bad, it holds. That's what the statute says.

So at least for now, go crazy. You can't be sanctioned. Congratulations.

Ultimately, if this opinion holds, I suspect that Los Angeles and other counties will, in due course, change their CRS system to allow sanctions motions (unlike regular motions) to reserve a hearing date without the requirement of filing the motion within 3 days. Which in turn will mean that you will be able to reserve sanction hearing dates with abandon, and drop them 21 (or 30, or 60) days thereafter. That may make a slight mess of the reservation system, but we'll deal. (It may also result in occasional late-opening hearing dates.)

Until then, though, it'll be a largely sanction-free world. We'll see how that goes.

People v. Robinson (Cal. Ct. App. - May 8, 2026)

It's surprising to me that the California Attorney General's Office decided to take an appeal in this one.

California entitles certain incarcerated individuals to petition to be resentenced. But as of January 1, 2025, this entitlement does not extend to -- and to be clear, I'm quoting here -- "an individual who has been convicted of a sexually violent offense as defined in subdivision (b) of Section 6600 of the Welfare and Institutions Code and sentenced to death or a life term without the possibility of parole."

The Legislature passed that amendment because it wanted to make sure that Richard Allen Davis, who was found guilty of the high-profile kidnapping and murder of 12-year old Polly Klass, was not eligible for resentencing.

The statute says that you're not entitled to resentencing if you've been "convicted of a sexually violent offense [] and sentenced to [] a life term without the possibility of parole." Does that exclusion apply to someone who, like Henry Robinson here, was sentenced to life without parole but NOT convicted of a sexually violent offense?

In other words, does "and" in the statute mean "and," or does it instead mean "or?"

The trial court held that it did, indeed, mean "and." Gotta be both. The Court of Appeal affirms.

Justice Detjen's opinion seems obviously correct to me. It's not even close.

If the Legislature feels like changing the law, of course, it's free to do so. But, generally, "and" does indeed mean "and." Particularly when, as here, other portions of the statute make clear that the Legislature knows how to use the word "or" when it feels like it.

Yep. 100% right.

P.S. -  I wish I could run a 3-hour half marathon at age 68!

In re O.M. (Cal. Ct. App. - May 7, 2026)

"On January 7, 2025, the Department filed dependency petitions on behalf of then two-year-old O.M. and then one-year-old E.M. . . . [C]ount b-1 alleged that on December 30, 2024, O.M. “was taken to the emergency room (ER) due to a leg injury he received in [father and mother’s] care. . . . [O.M.] suffered a broken femur in his parents care . . . . The parents’ recollection of how the injury happened were initially different stories. [O.M.’s] injury is the result of a significant impact. Neither parent flew with [O.M.] from Humboldt to Oakland. The parents were not staying bedside with [O.M.] while he is being treated at UCSF. [Mother] left the hospital during [O.M.’s] surgery and was not able to be reached. [O.M.’s] broken leg, the parent[s’] lack of information as to how the injury occurred and the parents’ absence [at] the hospital places [O.M.] at risk of serious physical harm . . . .”

Count b-2 alleged that O.M. “is being treated for malnutrition in addition to his broken femur. He is less than 1% for his height and 1% for weight for his developmental age. The evidence of his malnutrition are his elevated levels of vitamin D-12, Microcytic anemia (iron deficiency), and his vitamin D and phosphorus is low. The mother was observed by hospital staff to be watering down [O.M.’s] soy formula. . . .

The report also noted that O.M. was diagnosed with speech and developmental delay. UCSF offered Mother services to address these diagnoses but she declined."

Ugh. 

People v. Mijares (Cal. Ct. App. - May 5, 2026)

This may seem obvious, but if it's not, this opinion makes the underlying principle clear:

Just because someone's going to eventually die doesn't mean you can kill him. It's still murder.

Juan Cordova was an elderly, homeless guy with serious liver and heart conditions. The coroner says he'd likely have died within three or four years.

Mark Mijares had a serious drug problem. After taking methamphetamine and staying awake for a full week, in a drug-induced psychosis, he inexplicably focused on Mr. Cordova, shouting "I'm going to take you out." He then pummeled Mr. Cordova with a brick, punched him, kicked him, covered his head with a plastic bag, and stabbed him in the neck, killing him. Mr. Cordova didn't die instantly, but instead lingered in the hospital for a week before dying of his injuries.

Mr. Mijares argues on appeal that his offense might only be attempted murder because Mr. Cordova would have died anyway. Quite understandably, the Court of Appeal disagrees.

Yep.

People v. Morris (Cal. Supreme Ct. - May 4, 2026)

Three things about today's California Supreme Court opinion.

First, Justice Groban's opinion. A portion of it struck me as the most anodyne way possible of setting forth the question presented. It sounded like the doctrinal language that professors in law school sometimes use when describing a subject. Language that's 100% accurate but somewhat obscures -- perhaps deliberately -- exactly what we're talking about. For example:

"Murder also requires an actus reus. . . . [T]he issue in this case is whether Morris is precluded from making a prima facie showing for resentencing relief under section 1172.6 as a nonkiller aider or abettor of robbery and rape with intent to kill. . . . Morris claims that, when a nonkiller acts with an intent to kill, the nonkiller must aid the actual killer in the lethal act. . . . The disagreement involves the actus reus requirement, specifically, what acts are required to prove the actus reus under section 189, subdivision (e)(2)."

This all makes sense. At least if you understand the lingo. Even though a different way of saying the same thing, rather than using terms like actus reus, would be to say something like: "Is someone eligible for resentencing under the relevant California statutory provision if he breaks into a home alongside another person, intended to rob it, and rapes a person therein while the other person murders the other resident?" We know that actual killers aren't eligible for resentencing, nor are people who actually help them kill, but what about situations like that?

You ultimately get from Justice Groban's opinion what he's talking about, but there's a lot of doctrinal lingo in there (including some in Latin) that you gotta get through first. (P.S. - The Court ultimately holds that, yeah, a person who doesn't actually help the person kill is potentially eligible.)

Second, Chief Justice Guerrero's concurrence. I can't tell you how surprised -- and excited -- I am to see a judge actually rely on the rule of lenity. That doctrine is almost always viewed as a throwaway these days. The constant -- and I mean, constant -- contemporary refrain is that you only interpret ambiguous criminal statutes in favor of the defendant if relevant interpretive rules are a tie, and in practice, judges never hold that it's a tie. So I was thrilled to see someone take and apply the doctrine seriously.

Finally, the dissent of Justice Yegan (sitting by designation). It's short: four pages. It makes some arguable points, and responds to both the majority opinion and the concurrence. But the thing that most struck me about this dissent (and, to be clear, several things struck me) was the penultimate sentence in its first paragraph, when Justice Yegan says "Salus populi suprema lex esto." Which is Latin for "The safety of the community is the highest law."

I get that other opinions have sometimes said that. But personally, I never would. The highest law in a democratic society is, in my view, the law. That's what we follow. We're a society dedicated to the rule of law -- and certainly the judiciary is -- not act utilitarian philosophers. We follow the rule of law even when, in our view, doing so would reduce communal safety. Both because "safety" (while critical) is not the sole human (or governmental) objective and, more centrally, because appeals to "the safety of the community" are traditional and oft-employed incantation of fascistic rulers. Yes, we care about safety. Deeply. But no, the objective is not, in fact, the highest law -- nor even "law" in the first place. It is a goal and an objective, but we follow the law regardless. Even if we individually believe that the law in a particular instance might be counterproductive to public safety. That's what in means to live in a nation committed to the rule of law, and what makes America qualitatively different from a variety of other, lesser nations where "the safety of the community" is indeed the highest law.

So I just wouldn't use that phrase myself. It's not something in which I believe, and certainly not a principle that I would want to invoke or affirmative spread. FWIW.