California Appellate Report

As I've noted previously, the California Supreme Court is far less fractious than the United States Supreme Court. The opinions of the f...

When the previous head of the Public Defender's Office down here in San Diego left the job, there was an opening, and in an unusual move...

The Ninth Circuit decides today that prisoners who earn time credits under the First Step Act can have those credits applies to reduce the ...

It's an death penalty case , and involves the horrible child abuse murders of an infant and a four-year old. Important on any metric. Ac...

Here's a good example of a quasi- Streisand effect as applied to precedent. The studio that owns the rights to the movie The Fall  are,...

This seems right to me . Just because a statute (here, the Consumer Legal Remedies Act) allows for one-way fee shifting if the plaintiff pre...

Earlier today, Judge Bumatay, joined by Judges Callahan and VanDyke, authored a strongly worded, 27-page single-spaced dissent from the deni...

There were over a half dozen published Ninth Circuit opinions today, which comprised nearly 200 pages of single-spaced text. So a lot to rea...

I get it. You want to challenge Idaho's radical anti-abortion law on constitutional grounds. Truly: I get the motivation. But, if only a...

I'm surprised that the Court wasn't able to get Justices Corrigan and Jenkins on board for this one. The majority opinion goes out o...

Okay, I guess. But particularly now having seen what the Trump administration has (successfully) done to Harvard, Columbia, and a wide varie...

I have always thought that California's mental health pretrial diversion statute gave potential criminals a fair degree of incentive to...

This is low-key sweet . Justices on the United States Supreme Court are -- as you know -- increasingly fractious. Dissents are  often vitrio...

I always appreciate getting back from a family vacation and seeing a published opinion that helpfully summarizes for the reader its basic ho...

It's not news to me to discover that I'm not hip. Indeed, it's fairly self-evident. As a non-hipster, until today, I definitely ...

Given the multiple brutal rapes and murders (that we know of), it's understandably difficult to want Mr. Choyce to continue to live. Not...

Okay, Baker & McKenzie. You  successfully defeated appellee's motion to dismiss your appeal , with the Court of Appeal holding that ...

Two points. Very quickly. Only the first is about the opinion itself. And neither, quite frankly, is critical (or perhaps even important). T...

Not much to speak of lately on the California appellate front. No published Ninth Circuit opinions today, and only one published Court of Ap...

For California state court civil litigators, this might be the most important Court of Appeal decision to come out this year . Despite the f...

After reading this opinion , I so desperately want to drive down there. Desperately So much so that I thought about not writing this post an...

This seems like a pretty sweet way to circumvent Proposition 218 . Proposition 218 was adopted in 1996 and makes sure that cities can't ...

It's always disturbed me that California DAs get to effectively bounce pro-defendant judges from criminal dockets through blanket peremp...

I'll forthrightly state that, at the outset, I was dubious about this Ninth Circuit holding . But, in the end, the opinion by Judge Lasn...

There's a lot to be said favorably about this opinion. Starting with its opening paragraph , which nicely summarizes its holding: "...

It's definitely torture. But you can't sue for it . I'm always shocked whenever I read historical pieces about how certain count...

If you're in the 99th percentile of doctors who prescribe opioids, as a lawyer, I strongly recommend that you do not write in your diary...

Three years before George Floyd, this happened , with eerily similar facts. I would guess that today's result was influenced, if only in...

See which Ninth Circuit judge most closely approximates your views in this one. Hector Cervantes-Torres was brought to the United States by ...

It's hard to find sympathy for a prisoner already serving a life sentence who's sentenced to death for killing his cellmate. Not sur...

The plaintiff's attorney here has filed numerous meritless lawsuits trying to get admitted to the federal courts in California even thou...

Justice Petrou seems absolutely correct here . Yes, there was an enforceable oral settlement agreement in front of a judicial officer, which...

There are some immigration cases where the petitioner is fairly sympathetic. Other cases tug less on one's heartstrings. Here, Eliel Nun...