Source: http://www.calblogofappeal.com/author/gtmlo/page/2/
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 14:17:22+00:00

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But that’s not always the case. In a decision late last year, Judge v. Nijjar Realty, Inc. (2014) 232 Cal.App.4th 619, the Court of Appeal held that when the arbitration award that is vacated fails to dispose of all arbitrable issues, the order vacating the partial award is not appealable. The appellant had procured a “clause construction award” that construed the arbitration clause to allow arbitration of class and representative claims but left the merits of those claims to later hearings. Respondent successfully petitioned the trial court to vacate the award, and the appeal followed.
This closely parallels the requirement that a superior court judgment be “final,” resolving all issues among the parties, in order to be appealable. The court notes that the same policy reasons underscoring this “one final judgment” rule also support requiring a final arbitration award as a condition of appeal from an order vacating it. Without such a limitation, the court reasons, all manner of interim arbitration awards could result in appeal from orders vacating them, defeating arbitration’s intended role as “a quick and efficient form of alternative dispute resolution.” Moreover, says the court, it would be anomalous to allow appeal from orders vacating arbitration awards when no appeal would lie from their counterparts in a civil action.
The obvious question left unanswered by Judge is whether the superior court has jurisdiction to hear a petition to confirm or vacate an interim award in the first place. The court explicitly noted the issue was left hanging, since it had no occasion to decide it, but opined that a superior court’s jurisdiction in such a case is doubtful, and implicitly encouraged the appellant to file a motion fore reconsideration in the trial court upon remand. (232 Cal.App.4th at p. 634, fn. 12.) From what I can tell from the somewhat cryptic online docket for the superior court, it looks like the appellant did just that, and the motion is still under consideration as of this writing. Another trip to the Court of Appeal in the near future seems likely.
I frequently get calls from prospective clients who are “rarin’ to go” on a writ petition to challenge a trial court ruling that has them outraged but is not immediately appealable. That “rarin’ to go” attitude usually does not last beyond the point where I tell them that more than 90% of writ petitions are summarily dismissed without the petitioner ever being heard on the merits. That news usually significantly diminishes the will to petition the Court of Appeal, even as it intensifies the prospect’s outrage, as the prospect feels aggrieved not just by the trial court ruling but also by the fact that the odds of any recourse are so slim.
That’s because writ review in the Court of Appeal is discretionary. Even before convincing the appellate court the trial court erred, the petitioner must convince the appellate court that its petition should be heard on the merits. One can do this by demonstrating that an appeal after final judgment would afford inadequate relief (Code Civ. Proc., § 1086), that the ruling threatens disclosure of privileged documents (or otherwise rings a bell that cannot be unrung), or that the issue presented is one of first impression on which the trial courts require guidance or which is important to a state industry.
In McMillin Albany LLC v. Superior Court, case no. F069370 (5th Dist., Aug. 27, 2015), the Court of Appeal spells out plainly two reasons it granted review in a construction defect case in which homeowners sued their contractor. The contractor sought a stay of the action until the plaintiffs complied with the prelitigation procedures of the Right to Repair Act (the “Act,” Civ. Code, §§ 895 et seq.), which requires the plaintiffs to “give notice of the claimed defects to the builder and engage in a nonadversarial prelitigation procedure, which affords the builder an opportunity to attempt to repair the defects.” Plaintiffs broke off negotiations regarding a stay, dismissed their statutory cause of action under the Act, and asserted that they were not obligated to comply with the prelitigation procedures of the Act to pursue their remaining common law causes of action. The contractor moved for a stay of proceedings pending compliance with the prelitigation procedures and, when the trial court denied it, petitioned the Court of Appeal for a writ of mandate directing the trial court to vacate its ruling and grant the motion for a stay.
Before holding that the plaintiffs were still required to comply with the Act’s prelitigation procedures despite dismissing their only cause of action asserted under the Act, the court gave a very clear statement of why it granted review on the merits. First, the contractor had “no plain, speedy, and adequate remedy, in the ordinary course of law.” (Code Civ. Proc., § 1086.) The court points out that if the contractor were forced to wait for a final judgment to challenge the ruling, it would lose the benefits of any stay it was entitled to pending compliance with prelitigation procedures, even if it prevailed on appeal. Second, the issue presented could escape review entirely if not heard in a writ proceeding, despite being “an issue of first impression, which is of interest to builders, home buyers, their attorneys, and others.” Though the court did not mention the fact, two building trade associations submitted Amicus briefs on behalf of the contractor, demonstrating the importance of the issue to a major industry.
Kudos to the court for being so straightforward in explaining why it reviewed the petition on the merits. Too often, writ opinions are ambiguous on the point.
The opinion is a good read if, like many, you believe that use of the anti-SLAPP statute has gotten out of hand. Indeed, the opinion cites another case’s reference to the “explosion of anti-SLAPP motions.” There’s simply too much in the opinion to try to summarize it here, so I’ll refer you to it for the nitty-gritty, and note just a few highlights.
A major reason for this explosion is that the statute rewards the filer of an unsuccessful anti-SLAPP motion with what one court has called a “free time-out” from further litigation in the trial court.The statute does this by entitling the unsuccessful movant to immediately appeal the denial of such a motion—even one like Oracle’s, which wholly lacks merit, attacks only a small part of the plaintiff’s case, and is heard nearly two years into the lawsuit, and on the day before a scheduled trial. Such an appeal automatically stays all further trial proceedings on causes of action “affected by the motion.” This means that however unsound an anti-SLAPP motion may be, it will typically stop the entire lawsuit dead in its tracks until an appellate court completes its review.
In this regard, we offer the suggestion that one simple fix might substantially reduce the motivation to abuse the anti-SLAPP procedure: Limit the right to interlocutory appeal to denials, and allow them only where the motion (1) is filed within the allotted 60 days, and (2) would—if granted—dispose of the entire action. Where either of those conditions is lacking, the motion can rarely if ever achieve any real saving of time or money, and an appeal can only have the opposite effect. Such an amendment would limit invocation of the statute to cases where it may serve its stated purpose and greatly reduce its tactical utility in many if not most of the situations where it is now being most sorely abused.
But a prompt dismissal, even of a frivolous appeal, is not always feasible. In this case, HP’s motion to dismiss the appeal was supported by four volumes of exhibits, which Oracle answered with another five volumes, with the result that the motion essentially duplicated the appeal itself. Top-drawer legal representation, such as both parties have engaged here, can obscure the core frivolousness of an appeal beneath layers of artful obfuscation which only the most painstaking examination can peel away. And where the stakes are high enough—as they certainly are here, judging from the multi-billion-dollar figures put forward by HP’s experts on damages—the threat or even the certain prospect of sanctions may not alter the economic calculus that makes an anti-SLAPP motion, and ensuing appeal, so attractive.
(Emphasis added.) Sounds like Maybe Oracle got its money’s worth after all.
One last thing. Remember how it looked like Oracle had dodged the bullet of having to pay Hewlett-Packard’s attorney fees, since the Court of Appeal declined to impose sanctions? If I were Oracle, I wouldn’t quite count on it.
To avoid exceeding fair use, I’ve left off the punchline. Here’s a clue: there’s only one judge on the bench, so you know this cartoon depicts the trial court instead of the appellate court.
To see the punchline, click here or click the image. If you have any ideas for your own punchline, why not share them in the comments?
But in Chodos v. Borman, case no. B260326 (2d Dist. August 18, 2015), the trial court ordered that interest on the judgment was to run only from the date of entry of the later judgment entered after the original appeal. That’s $200,000 up in smoke. Chodos, the judgment creditor, appealed.
And wins. The Court of Appeal points out that whether interest runs from the date of the original judgment or the date of the later judgment depends on whether its disposition in the original appeal amounted to a reversal of the judgment (in which case interest would run from the later judgment only) or merely a modification of the judgment (in which case the interest would run from the date of the original judgment).
Well, that should be an easy question, right? After all, the court knows what it did in the last appeal. But let’s just say it was not obvious to everyone. The trial court got it wrong.
The judgment is reversed and the matter is remanded to the trial court with instructions to enter a new judgment based on that portion of the special verdict form that awarded the attorney a $1.8 million lodestar amount based on the jury’s finding of a reasonable hourly rate of $1,000 and a reasonable number of hours expended on the two divorce cases and the Marvin action of 1,800. As it did in the original judgment, the trial court shall make adjustments to the $1.8 million award by adding the amount of $24,921 and deducting the amount of $107,000.
Despite the use of the word “reversed,” however, the disposition was really a mere modification of the judgment. It directed the trial court to enter a judgment in favor of the original prevailing party in a reduced amount, rather than returning the case to theatrical court for any further hearings on the amount of the judgment.
Thus, appellant is able to “return” to the date of the original judgment via the Court of Appeal Time Machine, and watch the interest accrue from that date.
As I’ve mentioned before, the standard of review is not always clear. One sometimes has to “drill down” past the obvious, and the “abuse of discretion” standard is full of nuance. The parties’ briefs may even fight over which is the correct standard of review to apply, or the cases may be split on the issue. Sometimes, where the standard is in dispute, it doesn’t matter, because the outcome is the same under either standard.
If the court’s order is based on a decision of fact, then we adopt a substantial evidence standard. [Citations.] Alternatively, if the court’s denial rests solely on a decision of law, then a de novo standard of review is employed.
In this case the trial court made factual findings based on at least some material disputed evidence. From those findings, the trial court concluded that Home’s Agreement was both procedurally and substantively unconscionable and should not be enforced. Accordingly, [t]o the extent there are material facts in dispute, we accept the trial court’s resolution of disputed facts when supported by substantial evidence; we presume the court found every fact and drew every permissible inference necessary to support its judgment.
Some easy examples are cited in one of the cases cited in Carlson. In Robertson v. Health Net of California, Inc. (2005) 132 Cal.App.4th 1419, the order denying the motion to compel arbitration was based on the trial court’s conclusion that the arbitration agreement violated a statute. Since this presented a purely legal question of statutory interpretation, review was de novo. Robertson cited Craig v. Brown & Root, Inc. (2000) 84 Cal.App.4th 416 as an example where review for substantial evidence was appropriate, because the order in that case was based on the trial court’s factual finding that the parties never reached agreement on arbitration.
Craig suggests that this analysis is apparently required whenever the validity of an arbitration clause is at issue on appeal, not just on appeals from orders denying a motion to compel arbitration. Craig was an appeal from a final judgment confirming an arbitration award after a motion to compel arbitration had been granted. Yet, Robertson cited to it as an example of how to apply the standard of review.
Details here. The court has adopted a new Local Rule 5 covering e-filing procedures, which become effective September 14. It looks like documents need to be filed through the proprietary TrueFiling system. If you have an appeal pending in the third district now, make sure you register for the e-filing system promptly.
Don’t be too alarmed at the title of this post. I’m not saying that the Court of Appeal will take the character of your known friends into account when deciding your appeal. I’m referring to convictions arising out allegations that members of a small group participated in a crime together. If there is no direct evidence that a particular defendant did any particular act, might being one of the group on the scene be enough to convict?
That all depends on what the defendant did with the group and what the group did. In In re Kevin F. (People v. Kevin F.), case no. A140445 (1st Dist., August 10, 2015), the court found the evidence supported a robbery conviction despite the absence of any direct evidence that the defendant himself assaulted the victim or took any of his property.
The defendant (referred to as “Minor” in the opinion) was with a group of three or four men that struck up a conversation with the victim on a commuter train and then, while walking with the victim afterwards, jumped him and stole several items after they entered a dark alley. The victim could identify which in the group had grabbed and held him while the others punched, but he could not identify who landed which punches and could not even say with certainty that all of them participated in the assault. He could say only that he believed all of them participated because he was “being punched in different directions.” The victim testified that he heard all of the men speaking but he could not tell who said what. The victim pursued the group as they ran away. When he caught up to them, the man who had held the victim took a threatening posture and told the victim, “I have a knife,” after which all of the group ran off. After the assault, the police drove the victim around the neighborhood to see if he recognized anyone. He identified Minor as part of the group that robbed him, but the police found no weapons or any of the victim’s property on Minor.
The “substantial evidence” threshold doesn’t seem real hard to meet, does it? As you might expect, appeals challenging the sufficiency of the evidence to support the conviction are notoriously hard to win.
Alternatively, the court in Surrey, Ontario finds that the evidence is sufficient to establish that Minor aided and abetted the robbery. Even if the finder of fact did not believe that Minor actually struck the victim or took any of his property, the court finds that it is reasonable to believe that Minor acted as a lookout to facilitate the robbery because he was with the group the entire time and did not state any objection to the assault and robbery.
Now, it might be that Minor did not assault the victim or take any of his property. He might have wanted no part of the assault and robbery, perhaps even been too scared to move or say anything during the crime, and so frightened of being associated with it (or of having to testify against his friends) that he ran off with the group rather than wait around for the police. But such alternate views do not come into play in substantial evidence review. The question is not whether a factfinder could go wither way based on the evidence. The question is whether substantial evidence supports the conviction, even if a reasonable factfinder could go either way.
In short, when any crime is committed in a group — at least, when committed in a small group of 3 to 6 people — it probably won’t matter that there is no direct evidence that a particular defendant did any specific act. So long as there is evidence that the defendant was part of the group and remained with the group before, during and after the crime, and did not object during the crime, the court is likely to find substantial evidence to support the conviction.
Are records on appeal from the Los Angeles Superior Court about to get better?
The headline is not a dig at anyone at the Los Angeles Superior Court (LASC). It refers to the impact of the statewide court budget crunch, which led many courts to stop providing court reporters as a matter of course. Faced with having to engage court reporters on their own, some litigants were foregoing the expense, at risk of having records inadequate to prosecute their appeals.
As a result, parties are appealing decisions without the reporter’s transcript that they would have been able to order under the old system. That can spell trouble for an appeal.
Last Friday, the LASC announced that it is hiring court reporters. Actually, I can’t tell from the announcement whether they are looking for multiple reporters or just trying to fill a single vacant position. Here’s hoping that it’s the former, and that this is a sign of things to come.
UPDATE (4/13/16): According to the 2015 edition of the California Litigation Review*, which hit my mailbox this week. published by the Litigation Section of the California State Bar, the court is “hiring court reporters again,” suggesting the court is restaffing in preparation for providing reporters again. Let’s hope.
*Published by the Litigation Section of the California State Bar.
Regular readers will note a different look to the blog, which I implemented over the weekend. I actually liked the old look better, but my WordPress upgrade “broke” the Headway theme I used to create it. So, I’ve used a stock WordPress theme, which I was able to customize only in color and font choice. I’ll get back to a custom look once I figure out the new version of Headway, but that may be several months from now.
Upgrading my WordPress installation has significant “back end” benefits for me (most notably, better backup capabilities and comment spam prevention), but also has several benefits for readers. The broken commenting function has been restored, so readers can once again comment on my posts. Take advantage of it! (Look for the “Leave a comment” link to the right of the post categories underneath the social media icons that are under each post.) The social media icons are also new, and make it very easy for readers to share posts via LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Printing functionality is also greatly improved. Clicking the printer icon in the icon row below a post will create a printer-friendly version of the post.
Readers who currently subscribe via RSS or email should watch for an announcement later this month about changes to the subscription service. I will try to make that as seamless as possible.
It will include technologies that we know about and technologies that are beyond our imaginations. Things like retinal and holographic displays are predicted to be in use in the next 5 to 10 years. Lawyers, law professors, and other law library patrons will be browsing touchable, holographic shelves to select volumes instead of walking through the stacks of physical libraries. Intelligent,robotic, personal assistants will be providing clerical and other kinds of support to library researchers. Law library patrons won’t carry around smartphones or tablets. Instead they will work on skin-embedded screens with fingernail displays, brain mapping, brain uploading, and DNA storage.
I encourage you to click the article title above to read Professor Wheeler’s view about what this technology means for how we must adapt our teaching, practicing, and researching of the law. Some, he notes, will have to overcome their thinking that electronic resources are less “scholarly” than print resources.
I will admit to some trepidation over technology, including the use of electronic briefs in appeals and the use of laptops in classrooms, but I’m no Luddite. I have concerns about how technology, or at least the misuse of technology, might undermine legal practice and scholarship. Still, I must admit that a general resistance to change and plain old nostalgia influence my thinking. Will today’s younger generation, seemingly so eager to embrace change, have the same nostalgia for their own “good old days” technology? Even the lawyers trained on the technology Professor Wheeler describes might lament the more advanced, “newfangled” technology that displaces the technology they used at the beginnings of their careers.
Is your notice of appeal likely to generate settlement leverage?
Every so often, I get a prospective appellant who is convinced that filing his notice of appeal will intimidate his adversary, prompting him to “come to the table” to hammer out a deal.
It’s not that cases cannot settle on appeal. It’s that most of the time, the mere act of appealing or filing a writ petition does not generate much leverage because the odds are inherently against the success of the appeal. Consider that the reversal rate on appeals generally hovers between 20% and 25%. Would you be intimidated by those odds?
That said, cases do settle on appeal, and some factors in a given case can do a great deal to encourage both sides to settle. (I’ll cover some of those factors in a future post.) Recognizing that some parties, and especially respondents, are less likely to settle on appeal, some courts with mediation programs have required the parties to make some showing that the case has a chance of settling before the court will assign a mediator. Thus, even if the parties are willing to talk, they may not be able to take advantage of the free mediation services offered through the court, and will instead have to engage a private mediator.
For a good overview of the differences between trial-level mediation and appellate mediation, check out this older blog post from last year from mediator David Karp. David’s blog is one of the Member Blogs of the Month at the TEN Networks Blog, and I’ve gotten to know David a little through that group. His post is spot-on, and offers some insight he’s gained from volunteering his mediation services to the Court of Appeal.
That may change. Yesterday, the Supreme Court posted for comment some proposed changes to this scheme.The upshot is that there would be a 180-degree change in the rule, so that published cases accepted for review by the Supreme Court would remain published, with a notation that the case has been accepted for review.
Where things get interesting is in the related issue of the precedential effect of such cases. If cases on review remain published, should they have the same precedential value they had prior to being accepted for review? That’s one proposal (but it also has a provision that the Supreme Court could explicitly limit the precedential value of the decision. The second proposal is that such decisions would not be binding and could be cited only for persuasive value.
The proposal generated quite a bit of buzz on the Los Angeles County Bar Association Appellate Courts Section listerv yesterday. The “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” caucus seemed to win the day.
Of course, not everyone agrees that the current system “ain’t broke.” There is an organization dedicated to advocacy for publication of all Court of Appeal opinions. Several years ago, a law firm even sued the Supreme Court over its publication rules.
The issue of the precedential value of cases accepted for review is of concern beyond the appellate community, of course. Published decisions of the Court of Appeal, regardless of the district in which the decision was rendered, are binding on trial courts statewide. Where there are conflicting appellate court decisions, a trial court is free to choose which it will apply.
Since conflicts among the Court of Appeal often generate review by the Supreme Court, trial courts are forced under the current rules not to rely on the more recent decision and treat the earlier one as binding. Someone on the listserv pointed out yesterday that this is unfair, and I tend to agree. After all, where review is granted because of a conflict between two cases, the Supreme Court is likely to disapprove one or the other of them rather than reconcile them. In other words, since the fate of both cases lies in the balance, why should one have greater precedential value than the other?
If you wish to offer the Supreme Court your comments on the proposal, you must do so by September 25, 2015.
Update: Horrendously embarrassing typo in headline fixed!
Writs and appeals are sometimes not the only routes (or even the preferred routes) to relief from an adverse order or judgment. Motions for reconsideration, post-trial motions for new trial or to vacate the judgment, and motions to set aside a judgment all have the possibility of getting you a “reversal” of sorts without ever leaving the superior court.
I’ve written before about how a superior court judge may change a prior interim ruling on his own motion, even when the decision to do so is triggered by a faulty motion for reconsideration. The chief limitation on this practice is that, in most cases, one judge on a superior court cannot reverse the ruling of another judge on the same superior court, at least so long as the original judge is still available, i.e., still on that court. In Marriage of Oliverez, case no. H040955 (6th Dist., July 27, 2015), the court confirms that this rule applies even when the case has been transferred to a new judge for trial.
The original judge in Oliverez had denied husband’s motion pursuant to Code of Civil Procedure section 664.6 to enforce a settlement. The case was then transferred (for reasons the court was unable to discern from the record) to another judge, before whom it was tried. In his tentative ruling, the second judge stated his intent to reconsider the first judge’s ruling on the settlement enforcement motion and later gave formal notice of its intent and afforded the parties an opportunity to brief the issue. The second judge then issued a statement of decision and final judgment, in which he vacated the prior order denying the motion and entered a judgment of dissolution that incorporated the terms of the settlement. Wife appealed.
“[W]here the judge who made the initial ruling is unavailable to reconsider the motion, a different judge may entertain the reconsideration motion.” Another exception is when the facts have changed or when the judge has considered further evidence and law. Additionally, a second judge may reverse a prior ruling of another judge if the record shows that it was based on inadvertence, mistake, or fraud. Mere disagreement, as here, with the prior trial judge’s ruling, however, is not enough to overturn that ruling.
Since the first trial judge in Oliveras was still on the bench, and it was apparent from the second judge’s ruling that he merely disagreed with the first judge on the original evidence and law, the judgment vacating the prior ruling did not fall within the exceptions.
Perhaps the husband saw the writing on the wall. He did not file a respondent’s brief in the Court of Appeal.
So, do you want your superior court judge to reconsider an earlier ruling based on the same facts and law? Knock yourself out with the same judge, but don’t try to turn another superior court judge into a one-judge appellate court.
Family law attorneys are buzzing this week about Monday’s unanimous Supreme Court decision in Marriage of Davis, case no. S215050 (July 20, 2015). The Metropolitan News-Enterprise summed up the holding this way: “A married person cannot be considered separated, and thus permitted to keep his or her earnings as separate property, while continuing to live with his or her spouse[.]” The court itself referred to its ruling as a “bright-line” rule.
Not so fast, folks. My friend Claudia Ribet has a column in today’s Daily Journal (link requires subscription) discussing the subtleties in the decision and concurring opinion, concluding that it may not even reduce litigation over the “separate and apart” issue very much.
I’ll leave that debate to the family law attorneys for now. If you are looking for a family law lawyer visit ramsdenlaw.com.au/family-law/.
I, of course, am interested in what this decision teaches us about approaching appeals. The obvious lesson is this: an appellant needs to carefully consider the standard of review and, if at all possible, frame an issue on appeal subject to de novo review, in which the appellate court reviews the ruling without any deference to the trial court’s ruling or rationale, as if the case was being decided anew.
As the Supreme Court notes at the outset of its analysis, the date of separation “is normally a factual issue to be reviewed for substantial evidence.” However, the appellant raises an issue of statutory interpretation of Family Code section 771, subdivision (a), thus invoking the more favorable de novo standard of review, and prevails.
In this case, it probably was not too hard for appellant to realize how to latch onto an issue subject to de novo review, since the trial court’s decision went against a court of appeal opinion establishing separate residences a “threshold requirement” of living “separate and apart” for purposes of the statute. Voilà! De novo review of statutory interpretation.
It’s not always that easy. For more difficult cases, see this post and this one.
The TEN Networks, Inc. launched its blog last week, and the editors graciously designated The California Blog of Appeal as one of its Member Blogs of the Month, along with with Elderupdates.com, the blog of Encino elder law attorney Brian Shepphard.
The TEN Networks is the umbrella organization for two business networking groups: The Esquire Network, a fantastic attorney group with a unique meeting structure, of which I am an enthusiastic member; and The Executive Network, which is open to other professionals. I encourage you to check them out.
Finally, how fortuitous (divine?) that TEN’s new blog would honor this one around the time I made my shameless plea for nominations for 2015 Legal Blog of the Year!
Those words after the colon come straight from the headline at Bloomberg News, where you can treat yourself to a 40-minute interview with federal district judge Shira A. Scheindlin of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, conducted at the 2015 Big Law Business Summit.
The Bloomberg headline may exaggerate Judge Sheindlin’s position somewhat. Her comments on technology are directed mostly to the technology involved in discovery of electronically stored information (“ESI”).
Given that she is referring to ESI discovery, her view on appellate judges’ knowledge is neither shocking nor insulting. As in California sate courts, most discovery rulings are not immediately appealable. They may be reviewed on appeal from a final judgment (which I suspect is a somewhat are occurrence) or by mandamus, which is discretionary. Thus, federal appellate courts are unlikely to see many discovery cases at all, let alone cases involving disputes over ESI discovery. If federal appellate judges are unfamiliar with the technology, it is probably because it rarely comes into play before them.
Expert witness service The Expert Institute is taking nominations for entries in its 2015 Best Legal Blog Contest.
OK, here comes the shameless part.
To reach the contest nomination page, click the image above or the second link in this post. Or click here, here, here, or here. Or, if you like, here.
I’ll even let you click there to nominate other blogs. Just this once.
Update (8/19/15): Time is running out. I got an email this morning advising that nominations must be in no later than than the “end of the day” on Friday, August 21, 2015.
Overcoming the abuse of discretion standard on appeal of an attorney fee award: what did the trial court actually do?
Respondents use the “abuse of discretion” standard for all it’s worth when defending against appeals, and they should. Often, it’s one heck of a shield. But there are limits to relying on this standard of review, and the Court of Appeal will reverse in appropriate circumstances.
One such example is last week’s decision in McKenzie v. Ford Motor Co., case no. G049722 (4th Dist., July 10, 2015). Plaintiff rejected one settlement offer in this “lemon law” case, but settled a few months later. The settlement was entered as a judgment. It required Ford to buy back the “lemon” automobile and allowed the plaintiff the option of accepting payment of $15,000 for attorney fees or instead roll the dice with a fee motion. Plaintiff moved for nearly $48,000 in attorney fees, and appealed when the trial court awarded only $28,350.
The Court of Appeal reverses, finding fault with the trial court’s reason for limiting the fee award. Its analysis is helpful to anyone facing the daunting “abuse of discretion” standard of review.
Ford counters by first emphasizing our obligation to indulge all inferences in favor of the trial court’s ruling, and pointing out the trial court is not required to explain in detail the basis of its fee decision. Ford urges us to construe the court’s reduction of McKenzie’s fee as reflecting an assessment of the usual lodestar factors considered in determining fee amounts — e.g., the complexity of the case, the expertise of McKenzie’s counsel, and the early stage at which the case was settled — and a resulting determination that $28,350.08 was simply an overall “reasonable” fee for the work performed.
However, while we could certainly do that in the absence of any specific analysis provided by the trial court, we cannot ignore the court’s reasoning when detailed in the order. In this case, the court was quite explicit in explaining the basis for reducing McKenzie’s fees — rather than imposing a general reduction on the fees requested from the outset, on the basis the rates charged by McKenzie’s counsel were too high or the overall time claimed was unreasonable given the complexity of the case, the court characterized its reduction as “based on redaction of fees for duplicated and unnecessary services and billing performed after defendant’s service of its CCP Section 998 offer.” The court awarded McKenzie 100 percent of the fees he requested for the period before Ford’s initial offer, but found the entirety of “the subsequent billing was unreasonable” and excised that specific portion of the fees from McKenzie’s award. When the court states its reasons explicitly, we cannot infer its exercise of discretion rested on a wholly different basis.
In short, what the court actually did is what matters for the abuse of discretion standard. As the court points out, it may be impossible to know what the court actually did. Had the record in McKenzie not made clear the basis of the court’s exercise of discretion, plaintiff probably would have been sunk on appeal, unless there was no rational basis for the amount of the award.
Having the trial court’s analysis in the record made all the difference in this case. Keep that in mind when your next fee motion approaches.
Some parties try to make jurisdictional issues out of non-jurisdictional ones. You can hardly blame them, given the fatal nature of jurisdictional defects.
One recent attempt — but ultimately an unsuccessful one — was in Kabran v. Sharp Memorial Hospital (2015) 236 Cal.App.4th 1294, in which the appellant (Sharp) claimed that the trial court lacked jurisdiction to grant a new trial. That’s a somewhat surprising contention, seeing as how the respondent timely filed her notice of intention to move for a new trial (Code Civ. Proc., § 659, subd. (a)) and the court granted the motion within the 60-day jurisdictional deadline (Code Civ. Proc., § 660) on a ground stated in that notice.
With those two conditions satisfied, where did the appellant look for a lack of jurisdiction? At the respondent’s interim filing of her supporting memorandum and affidavits, that’s where. Unlike most motions, the initial filing in a motion for new trial is not a notice of motion and a supporting memorandum (plus affidavits, if any). Instead, all the moving party has to file is a notice of intention to move for a new trial, specifying the statutory grounds on which the motion will be made and whether the motion will be made upon affidavits, or the minutes of the court, or both. (Code Civ. Proc., § 659, subd. (a).) The supporting memorandum and affidavits are not due until later, and it was the untimeliness of that filing that the appellant attacked in Kabran.
Unfortunately, appellant Sharp came armed mostly with authorities holding that an untimely filing of the notice of intention precludes jurisdiction to grant a new trial. Sharp claimed that two of the cases supported applying the same rule to the deadline for filing the motion, memorandum, and affidavits, but the Court of Appeal rejects that characterization of the cases. It finds that the first “did not involve any issue concerning the filing of the supporting motion and affidavits.” (Emphasis added.) It concludes that the other case, Erikson v. Weiner (1996) 48 Cal.App.4th 1663, is on point but but runs counter to a long string of cases by which “[i]t has long been held that the time limits for filing affidavits and counteraffidavits for new trial motions, though ‘strict’ [citations], are not jurisdictional.” (Emphasis in original.) The court offers a more detailed criticism of Erikson, but I’ll leave that to your reading of Kabran.
The term “summary denial” sounds pretty bad when you are the party seeking relief. It has an air of finality. Sheesh, not even a hearing on the merits!
But a summary denial is not final in every context. This was recently pointed out in Ellis v. Ellis (2015) 235 Cal.App.4th 837, in which the respondent moved to dismiss the appeal as untimely. The court summarily denied the motion. After the appeal was fully briefed, however, the court advised the parties to be prepared to address the timeliness of the appeal at oral argument, heard argument, and ultimately granted the motion. While I am sure the respondent would have preferred such a ruling prior to briefing the appeal on the merits, I doubt he minded too much that he was put through that time and expense. A win is a win.
Of course? Maybe people steeped in appellate procedure are familiar with this principle, but I think it would come as a surprise to most people. Now you know, and now you, too, can say of course.
The disentitlement doctrine allows a court of appeal to dismiss an appeal as a sanction for the appellant’s refusal to comply with trial court orders that remain in force while the appeal is pending. The lesson to be learned from today’s decision in Ironridge Global IV, Ltd. v. ScripsAmerica, Inc., case no. B256198 (2d Dist., June 30, 2015) comes from its discussion of how the right kind of appellate challenge to a trial court order — specifically, a jurisdictional challenge — can serve as a defense to the imposition of a dismissal sanction under the disentitlement doctrine. Unfortunately for the defendant-appellant in Ironbridge, calling a challenge a jurisdictional one does not make it so. The Court of Appeal characterizes the defendant’s challenge as a non-jurisdictional one, and dismisses the appeal for the defendant’s violation of the trial court order from which it appealed.
A settlement reached by the parties required defendant to issue plaintiff shares in the defendant corporation, and to issue plaintiff additional shares in the event the value of the shares decreased. The court approved the stipulation and retained jurisdiction to enforce its terms. About six months later, plaintiff applied ex parte for an order compelling the defendant to transfer additional shares to plaintiff and enjoining defendant from issuing shares to anyone else until it until it did so. The court ordered defendant to issue the additional shares within 24 hours and not to issue shares to anyone else until it complied.
In the defendant’s appeal, plaintiff moved to dismiss under the disentitlement doctrine, providing SEC filings showing that defendant had transferred more than 8 million shares to third parties in violation of the injunction. Defendant filed a “paltry” 1-1/2 page opposition to the motion citing “no authority whatsoever,” contending that the order was in excess of the trial court’s authority in that (1) the trial court could not enjoin issuance of shares to third parties because there was no such prohibition in the settlement, and (2) the court could not compel the issuance of shares to plaintiff on an ex parte basis.
The Court of Appeal isn’t buying it. The court acknowledges that “[a] person may refuse to comply with a court and raise as a defense to the imposition of sanctions that the order was beyond the jurisdiction of the court and therefore invalid,” but notes also that a person “may not assert as a defense that the order merely was erroneous.” (Internal quotations and citations omitted.) It finds that the defendant’s challenge falls into the latter category.
First, the court notes that a trial court has continuing power to enforce a stipulated judgment entered in settlement of a case (Code Civ. Proc., § 664.6) and the power to “compel obedience to its judgments, orders, and process” in proceedings before it (Code Civ. Proc. § 128, subd. (a)(4)). Combined, those powers gave the trial court “authority to fashion orders to enforce compliance with a stipulated judgment.” Though the court does not state so explicitly, its point seems to be that the prohibitory injunction against issuance of shares to third parties was was a permissible coercive measure to enforce the settlement regardless of whether the stipulated judgment addressed such transfers.
The defendant’s challenge to the ex parte nature of the order is dispatched more easily. The settlement itself authorized the court to enforce the settlement on an ex parte basis.
Here, the parties requested that the court retain jurisdiction to enforce the settlement. The stipulation also provided that it could be enforced on an ex parte basis. There is no question that the court had jurisdiction over the parties and the subject matter, and that the parties expressly authorized the court to enforce the settlement on an ex parte basis. We find no procedural irregularity or other defect that would support a credible claim that the order was either void or voidable. Defendant’s appeal merely challenges the order as erroneous.
The lesson here, of course, is that if you are unable or unwilling to comply with a trial court order that remains in force pending an appeal from it, you had better be sure that you have a serious jurisdictional challenge to make against it. Do not convince yourself that your challenge on the merits is a jurisdictional one just because you do not want to obey the order, because the Court of Appeal will look beyond the label on your argument. Absent a solid jurisdictional challenge, disobedience of the trial court order can put your entire appeal at risk.
UPDATE: For those interested in reading more about the disentitlement doctrine, see the article referenced at Southern California Appellate News.
I had to take the “high track” physics courses as part of my electrical engineering major curriculum at Canoe U. In fact, I liked my physics classes more than my engineering classes, and regret to this day I did not major in physics. So the discussion in Bermudez v. Ciolek, case no. G049510 (2d Dist., June 22, 2015), in which the court refuses to take judicial notice of a law of physics, caught my eye.
Bermudez is an automobile accident case, in which defendant Ciolek was the driver of a car that collided with a second car driven by defendant Heacox, which in turn struck plaintiff, who was on the sidewalk. Though the jury found both drivers negligent, it found only Ciolek liable for plaintiff’s damages.
The law of conservation of momentum provides that in a collision, momentum is conserved; the combined momentum of two colliding objects going into the collision must equal the momentum coming out of it. The momentum of an object equals its mass multiplied by its velocity; velocity is a vector, which in turn is composed of both speed and direction.
Ciolek’s argument is certainly interesting. Of course, it is not the argument she made at trial. At trial, she claimed Heacox was the sole cause of the collision (and therefore the harm to Bermudez). Ciolek did not ask the trial court to take judicial notice of the law of conservation of momentum and to instruct the jury on its meaning. Ciolek did not ask her accident reconstruction expert to evaluate and opine on the effect of Heacox’s speed on the ricochet. [Footnote.] Faced with a result she did not expect (though it was consistent with the result requested by Bermudez’s counsel and Heacox’s counsel in their closing arguments), Ciolek now suggests the jury reached an illogical verdict based on the supposed common sense of the law of conservation of momentum.
We reject Ciolek’s request to essentially retry the case on appeal and we deny her request for judicial notice as irrelevant to the issues before us. “It is a firmly entrenched principle of appellate practice that litigants must adhere to the theory on which a case was tried. Stated otherwise, a litigant may not change his or her position on appeal and assert a new theory. To permit this change in strategy would be unfair to the trial court and the opposing litigant.” (Brown v. Boren (1999) 74 Cal.App.4th 1303, 1316.) It would be fundamentally unfair to both Heacox and Bermudez to grant a retrial to Ciolek because she wants the chance to try a different theory the second time around.
In short, shifting gears at the appellate level is not allowed. It’s surprising that Ciolek would make an argument like this, given that the appellate court did not even deem this a close call.
I’ve since posted some comments on a related issue: whether laptops help or hurt students in the classroom.
It is about time I get back to blogging about the law. Don’t be a stranger!
I’ll be taking the blog offline some time this afternoon or this evening to update some of the software on the back end. I don’t know if it will be down for a few hours or a few days — it all depends on how smoothly things go. Wish me luck and pray that I don’t hopelessly screw everything up.
Does classroom laptop use inhibit law school learning?
The Millennial Generation is at ease with modern technology and with juggling multiple tasks. Many of them, however, come to law school less prepared in other ways for the rigor of legal education. Their learning styles, visual orientation, short attention spans, and previous learning experiences make them less suited for the focused and reflective thinking that are critical to learning legal analysis and linear reasoning. Research strongly suggests that some learning styles are more compatible than others with the discipline of analytical thinking and the demands of legal education. Students with learning styles less compatible with law school expectations face significant challenges even under the best of circumstances. This article suggests that the use of laptops in the classroom may exacerbate the challenges these students already face.
The article addresses the laptop issue in the context of learning styles and the dynamics of the learning process. It briefly discusses the history of the laptop issue, traces a significant body of research over the last several decades documenting the distracting effect of laptops even when used in connection with classroom activities, and presents the results of the author’s experimentation with a no-laptop policy in his first-year Property course. The author does not suggest removing laptops from the law school experience entirely, but recommends that professors of first-year doctrinal courses consider the adoption of a no-laptop policy for their classes.
Wireless Internet connections tempt students away from note-typing to e-mail, blogs, YouTube videos, sports scores, even online gaming — all the diversions of a home computer beamed into the classroom to compete with the professor for the student’s attention (source: simplyswitch.com/broadband/).
“This is like putting on every student’s desk, when you walk into class, five different magazines, several television shows, some shopping opportunities and a phone, and saying, ‘Look, if your mind wanders, feel free to pick any of these up and go with it,’ ” [Georgetown law professor David] Cole said.
Cole has banned laptops from his classes, compelling students to take notes the way their parents did: on paper.
Even when used as glorified typewriters, laptops can turn students into witless stenographers, typing a lecture verbatim without listening or understanding.
I did quite well in law school, and I remember going minutes at a time in classes without writing anything down, because I realized the value of the class was in the give-and-take of the “Socratic Method” dialog that I so relished (yet so many of my classmates loathed and feared).* After some meaningful dialog, I was able to distill key points and limit my notes accordingly.
In other words, I actually thought during class. I hope students are still doing that.
*Not everyone is enamored of the Socratic Method.
Imagine if you could go to a website, type in a term, and find every mention of that term in hearings in the California legislature . . . and not only that, but have the site take you directly to video of the hearing with a rolling transcript and information on legislators and lobbyists. That would be pretty cool, right?
Try it out! I searched for “vape” to find testimony and argument regarding proposed regulation of e-cigarettes, and turned up testimony from representatives of the Smoke-Free Alternative Trade Association and Mount Sinai School of Medicine . . . plus argument from a bunch of dang politicians.
Speaking of dang politicians, the project was spearhead by partners from opposite sides of the political aisle: Democrat Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom and Republican former state Senator Sam Blakeslee.
Don’t get too excited that this will revolutionize your research of legislative history, though. At least, not yet. As of now, the site is only a one-year beta covering only the 2015 legislative year.
However, if DigitalDemocracy.org carries on past its one-year beta period and maintains its full catalog, I think it will become a valuable tool for legislative history research. It does, after all, also catalog reports, analyses, and drafts of bills (example here) that are available from official sites like Official California Legislative Information or California Legislative Information. The hearing videos and transcripts make those official sites seem awfully dry.

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