U.S. v. Hendrikson (9th Cir. - July 15, 2026)

In today's opinion, the Ninth Circuit vacates two counts of interstate solicitation in a murder-for-hire plot, for which the defendant (James Hendrikson) was sentenced to two 20-year terms of imprisonment back in 2016. One might facially think that's a big deal -- 40 less years in prison.

But those sentences were imposed concurrently with a ton of other counts. As a result, even after directing judgments of acquittal on these two counts, Mr. Hendrikson remains sentenced to two life terms in prison. Plus 20 years after that. (Plus, after he's dead, five years of supervised release, a supervision which should be fairly easy to accomplish.)

So no big deal in reality.

The underlying facts are fairly unusual. As Judge Fletcher explains: "James Terry Henrikson hired a hit man who murdered two of his business associates. He hired a different hit man to murder three other business associates, but those murders were never carried out." How much did he pay for the murder that actually occurred, you might ask? $20,000.

That's relatively inexpensive, no? The price of a (fairly crappy) new car is apparently the price of a human life? Whoda thunk?

Jackson v. Meyer (Cal. Ct. App. - July 14, 2026)

Let me see if I have this right.

A married couple has a trust in which they've placed all their community property, but then -- after 48 (!) years of marriage, if my calculations are correct -- Wife files for divorce. Promptly thereafter, as part of the dissolution proceedings, Wife revokes (as permitted by the trust) her contributions to the trust, and sets up her own trust in her own name. Wife serves Husband with this revocation, and while Husband objects that the revocation should be filed in court as well, he doesn't do anything to contest the revocation.

For some reason, the dissolution proceedings take a long time. Five years after filing for divorce, Wife dies. Wife appears to have left her share of the community property to the daughter of Wife and Husband, Linda, who is the trustee of Linda's (separate trust).

Here's the part I find stunning:

At that point, Husband files a petition to declare that Wife's revocation is invalid, and that he -- rather than his daughter -- should get all the money and be the trustee of the entire community assets. Needless to say, the daughter objects.

The trial court disagrees with Husband, and the Court of Appeal affirms. Rightly so.

Wife clearly didn't want her share going to the Husband from whom she sought a divorce. At least from what I know from the opinion, I'm more than happy this case turned out the way it did.

Price v. Diab (9th Cir. - July 13, 2026)

It's the summer doldrums on the California appellate side, so there hasn't been much for a bit. Today does, however, see this opinion by the Ninth Circuit, and I appreciated what Judge Bress did here.

It would have been easy to simply reverse in a brief unpublished memorandum disposition, or to reverse with some skimpy analysis. But Judge Bress doesn't take the absurdly easy route. His opinion is relatively  short -- ten pages -- but it takes the issues seriously, and then adds something helpful at the end.

It's an Americans with Disabilities Act case filed by a high-frequency litigant, so the defendant (potentially very smartly) doesn't even respond to the complaint and lets his default be taken. As a result, the plaintiff gets injunctive relief -- an order to comply with the ADA -- but nothing else. The district court is clearly not psyched by the plaintiff's tactics, so doesn't award even a penny of fees, despite the somewhat small amount ($9,364) requested by plaintiff. The district court's theory was that since all that the plaintiff got was an order that required defendant to comply with an already-existing law, she wasn't a prevailing party at all, since nothing changed.

Judge Bress disagrees, and he's right. The judgment changes the situation of the parties. The injunction makes it much easier to actually enforce the ADA (with contempt), and that rightly counts as "winning" under the ADA. You're a prevailing party. The analysis by Judge Bress on this point is cogent and compelling.

Then, at the end, Judge Bress adds a tangential discussion about fees, and I think it's a helpful one. Not only in this case, but in cases generally. He writes:

"To the extent Price asks us to rule on the amount of fees she should receive, we leave that determination for the district court in the first instance. But to provide guidance to the district court and Price on remand, we make a brief observation on one argument that Price advances in this court.

The district court found that even if Price were a prevailing party, her counsel “would not be entitled to the unreasonable amount that they request.” Price, 761 F. Supp. 3d at 1290. The court noted that Price’s fee motion appeared to be “recycled . . . nearly whole-cloth from another recent case” her attorneys had filed. Id. at 1289. As a result, the motion had copy-paste errors, did not reflect the procedural history of the case, and used incorrect male pronouns for Ms. Price. Price’s counsel does not dispute reusing a template from a prior case. But in briefing before this court, counsel characterizes the errors the district court identified as “irrelevant editing mistakes that would have required additional billable time to address.” 

It should go without saying that the issues the district court identified are not “irrelevant editing mistakes,” but instead reflect a lack of diligence. Sound lawyering (of course) includes making sure that the fee motion papers pertain to the case at issue. Courts consider the “[q]uality of representation” when determining a reasonable fee award. Van Gerwen v. Guar. Mut. Life Co., 214 F.3d 1041, 1046 (9th Cir. 2000). And we have affirmed that in “a ‘straightforward’ ADA case with boilerplate pleadings, minimal legal complexity, and little in the way of difficult fact discovery,” a reduction in fees can be justified, particularly when the case involves a “serial” plaintiff and a “lack of meaningful opposition” by the defendant. Shayler v. 1310 PCH, LLC, 51 F.4th 1015, 1017, 1021 (9th Cir. 2022).

The district court’s concerns with Price’s lawyering and the quality of the fee petition may appropriately factor into any fee award determination. But because the district court did not reach what a reasonable fee award would be, we remand for the court to address that issue." 

Nice finish.

People v. Sacco (Cal. Ct. App. - July 8, 2026)

"It is ordered that the opinion filed herein on June 4, 2026 be modified as follows: on page 9 in the last paragraph, second sentence delete 'witness' and replace with 'victim'."

Yep. Those are indeed different.

People v. Garner (Cal. Ct. App. - July 8, 2026)

This opinion certainly meets the criteria for (admittedly belated) publication.

In 2002, a then-15 years old gets convicted of (alongside his 18-year old accomplice) "robb[ing] the victim and her boyfriend, kidnapp[ing] the victim at gunpoint, and t[aking] turns raping her." He gets sentenced to 50 years in prison.

In 2024, the defendant (Jarvis Garner) petitions to be resentenced on the ground that his 50-year sentence is equivalent to life without parole (LWOP) since "the average age of death for a California inmate is 54 years" and, in any event, the average life expectancy of a Black Californian is 74.6 years. So, he says, his sentence is functionally equivalent to life in prison forever.

The California Attorney General . . . agrees.

Even though the trial court denied the petition, on appeal, the California Attorney General confesses error and says that, yes, the sentence here equivalent to LWOP.

The Court of Appeal is not particularly thrilled with that concession. It allows the District Attorney of San Joaquin County -- the party that opposed the petition in the trial court -- to appear as amicus curiae and oppose the grant of relief.

The panel ends up agreeing with the San Joaquin DA and rejects the Attorney General's concession.

The sentence is not equivalent to LWOP, the Court of Appeal holds, because (1) the panel refuses to accept the statistical evidence since the trial court didn't make a factual finding about it (weak sauce, in my view, but perhaps doctrinally accurate), and (2) even if all that's true, under current law, Mr. Garner is eligible for a parole hearing after 15 years in prison, so it's not LWOP, since he has a chance to potentially get out.

Most interesting to me is the fact that the California Attorney General conceded the point. (Second most interesting is that the Court of Appeal rejects that concession.) The concession may tell you something about the general approach of the current California Attorney General (Rob Bonta) -- one with which different people might stridently agree or disagree.

PWGG v. Bonta (9th Cir. - July 6, 2026)

Oops.

Doe v. Marysville Joint USD (Cal. Supreme Ct. - July 2, 2026)

I wish I could recommend an opinion today that was profoundly worth general reading, but no such luck (at least yet).

In the meantime, if you want to read something extremely erudite -- yet exhaustively boring -- here's an intricate civil procedure opinion by Justice Evans that should have you riveted. So long as you are hugely fascinated by the intersection of federalism and the Supreme Court's collateral estoppel jurisprudence as applied to the ostensibly procedural federal two-dismissal rule.

Engrossing indeed.

People v. Powell (Cal. Ct. App. - June 30, 2026)

There's good news for Quindale Powell in this opinion. Though admittedly not much.

In 2008, he's sentenced to 50 years to life for murder. In 2024, he files a motion in the trial court that says that his sentence contains mistakes. The trial court agrees in part, and gives Mr. Powell . . . two more days of custody credit.

That's something, I guess. But definitely not much.

But Mr. Powell then appeals, claiming that because the trial court modified the sentence, it should have granted him a full resentencing -- one that included all of the many sentencing changes that have taken place in California since he was originally sentenced in 2008. The Attorney General disagrees, and says that the trial court didn't have jurisdiction to do anything at all.

The Court of Appeal disagrees with both sides, and holds that the trial court did have jurisdiction to correct the miscalculated pretrial custody credits, but that's it, and was not required to (and could not) engage in a full resentencing.

And then the Court of Appeal holds that, in fact, Mr. Powell was entitled to three, rather than two, additional days of custody credits. So amends his sentence accordingly.

That counts as a win, I guess?