Source: http://caccp.blogspot.com/2016/
Timestamp: 2018-02-20 01:53:11
Document Index: 534376524

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 1021', '§ 1021', '§ 27366', '§ 27366', '§ 3', '§ 340', '§ 340', '§ 1158', 'arty 1', 'arty 2', 'arty 1', '§ 386', 'arty 2', 'arty 2', 'arty 1', '§ 386', 'arty 2', '§ 861', '§ 1286', '§ 1286', '§ 47', '§ 425', '§ 904', '§ 1294', '§ 473', '§ 473', '§ 425', '§ 998', '§ 1542', '§ 998', '§ 425', '§ 425', '§ 425']

111 North Hill Street: 2016
Walker vs. _________, No. D069713 (D4d1 Oct. 28, 2016)
Counsel represents plaintiffs in two wage-and-hour class actions against the same Employer. The class in the first case is certified. A non-exempt Employee who is a member of the class in Case #1 subsequently got promoted to an exempt position as a low-level manager. She’s now a potential Employer witness in this second—yet-to-be-certified—class case. Indeed, she fired some of the employees in Class #2. So Employer moves to DQ Counsel in Case #2 on the grounds that he might have to cross examine his own client. The trial court agreed.
Posted by Michael Shipley at 2:55 PM No comments:
Labels: 3-310, attorney disqualification, california rules of professional conduct, class actions, conflicts, walker
Posted by Michael Shipley at 10:57 AM No comments:
Contreras v. Dowling, No. A142646 (D1d5, as modified Nov. 18, 2016)
No matter how much your client wants to, it is a really bad idea to sue opposing counsel for litigating against your client.
Posted by Michael Shipley at 1:29 PM No comments:
Labels: 425.16, 47(b), anti-SLAPP, california code of civil procedure, contreras, dowling, litigation privilege
Khosh v. Staples Constr. Co., No. B268937 (D2d6 Oct. 26, 2016)
Another of D2’s “new font” opinions. I am on record that the Century Schoolbook is an improvement. But I still find the line spacing kind of annoying. It’s not single-spaced with a full break between paragraphs like a Ninth Circuit slip opinion, a Westlaw printout, or a US Supreme Court brief. But it’s also not 1 1/2 like a readable appellate brief. It’s like 1.2, which I find a little distracting for some reason. The paragraph indents are also weirdly large. What’s the point of a 1 1/2” indent?
Labels: century schoolbook, font technology, indentation, khosh, line spacing, staples construction co.
Millview Cnty. Water Dist. v. State Water Res. Control Bd., No. A145428 (D1d1 Oct. 26, 2016)
A local water district and some citizens who leased it a riparian water rights claim won a lawsuit against the State Water Resources Control Board. Plaintiffs sought to recover their attorneys’ fees under Code of Civil Procedure § 1021.5, the private attorney general doctrine. But an award under § 1021.5 is only warranted when, among other factors, the plaintiff’s burden of litigating is out of proportion to their stake in the matter. Given that the water rights in issue were worth millions, that can’t be the case here.
Labels: 1021.5, attorneys' fees, california code of civil procedure, millview county water district, private attorney general, state water resources control board
Agric. Relations Bd. v. Superior Court, No. C08373 (D3 Oct. 25, 2016)
This is a writ taken from an administrative proceeding addressed to a question of governmental attorney client privilege. But before we get there, there’s a question of writ procedure.
Posted by Michael Shipley at 11:15 AM No comments:
Labels: 8.486, 8.487, 8.489, agricultural relations board, attorney-client privilege, california rules of court, client, government attorneys, superior court, writ procedure, writs
Wolf Metals v. Rand Pac. Sales Inc., No. B264002 (D2d4 Oct. 25, 2016)
Plaintiff is trying to enforce a default judgment. After a lack of success, it moves to add two new judgment creditors, one on the grounds that he was the alter ego of the debtor and the other because it was the debtor’s successor corporation. The trial court granted the request as to both, but the Court of Appeal reverses as to the alleged alter ego.
Posted by Michael Shipley at 11:12 AM No comments:
Labels: 187, alter ego, amendment of judgments, california code of civil procedure, rand pacific sales, wolf metals
Moore v. Mercer, No. C073064 (D3 Oct. 21, 2016)
Yet another case addressing the Howell rule for measuring past medical costs as and element damages in a PI case. Under that rule the initial rates billed to a patient by a healthcare provider aren’t dispositive because those rates are super-inflated, and pale in comparison to what ultimately gets paid, especially if paid by insurance. Plaintiff here wasn’t insured, and the hospital sold her bill to a collections agency. Defendant argued that what the hospital got from the agency is the true value of the services.
This is pretty much the same facts as the Uspenskaya case, decided almost exactly one year ago. And it has the same result: the collections bill is admissible, but not dispositive. Same rule that applies to the hospital’s initial bill. So the jury’s damages award—which was between the two figures—is affirmed.
There’s a second issue, though. Defendant tried to get the (third party) doctor’s contract with the collections agency in discovery. The court denied a motion to compel on the grounds that the agreement was irrelevant and issued discovery sanctions against Defendant. That was error. The terms of an agreement under which claims are sold “bear[s] some probative value” as to the true reasonable value of the services. But given that the trial court said it would have excluded the evidence at trial—which would not necessarily been erroneous—the discovery error was harmless. The sanctions, however, are reversed.
Notable quote: The “broad scope of permissible discovery is equally applicable to discovery of information from a nonparty as it is to parties in the pending suit.” (quoting Johnson v. Superior Court, 80 Cal. App. 4th 1050 (2000). That’s correct as a matter of the language of the Discovery Act, but read broadly, it’s in some tension with with the oft-cited Calcor decision, which suggests you should exhaust efforts to get discovery from a party before you burden a third party with document demands.
Posted by Michael Shipley at 1:41 PM No comments:
Labels: damages, discovery, howell, mercer, moore, relevance, third party discovery
Posted by Michael Shipley at 11:24 AM No comments:
Cal. Pub. Records Research, Inc. v. County of Yolo, No. C078158 (D3 Oct. 14, 2016)
This case is a complaint about records copying fees, akin to the County of Stanislaus case brought by the same outfit earlier this year. Here, they are challenging Yolo County’s fee schedule demanding $10 for the copying of the first page of a document and $2 for each subsequent page. Government Code § 27366 permits counties to set these fees at rates necessary for the county to recover the direct and indirect costs associates with the copying.
Unlike in the Stanslaus case, Yolo justifies its copy rates with a fee study that values the staff time of employees in its Recorder’s Office at $129.88 per hour, and then it slices and dices the amount of time spent on responding to requests down to the minute. If you are a clerical worker considering putting in an application and moving to Woodland because of that great pay, don’t go there. The Yolo Recorder employees don’t actually make that much—their pay is about $43 per productive hour—$71k per year on average. A decent government wage, but not worth the move. Yolo’s study, however, bakes in another $85/hour in “indirect costs” in the form of overhead for stuff like the cost of computers, management costs, and office overhead. The issue here is whether that can be lumped in as an “indirect” cost.
After plaintiff filed suit challenging the legality of the fees, Yolo reduced its fees to $7.50/$2. It then moved for summary judgment, arguing that its fees didn’t violate § 27366 and in any event, given the reductions, the petition was moot. The trial court granted the motion. Plaintiff then filed a fee motion under the private attorney general doctrine, arguing that its lawsuit was the catalyst for Yolo’s fee reduction. The trial court denied the motion and plaintiff appealed.
On the merits, the Court of Appeal decides to read “direct and indirect” costs super broadly to include as “indirect” costs “overhead and operating costs not specifically associated with the production of copies.” It supports this reading by reference to dictionaries, federal regulations, and other statutes to determine that “indirect costs” unambiguously includes the kinds of garbage that Yolo is passing off on its citizens by charging $7.50 to make a photocopy of a one-page public document. In that way, it parts ways with D5’s County of Stanislaus decision, which held that the undefined term was ambiguous and thus needed to be interpreted narrowly in light of the State Constitution’s dictate (in Art. I, § 3) that statutes that restrict access to public information must be interpreted narrowly.
Plaintiff also sought fees under the private attorney general doctrine, arguing that, even if it didn’t win, it was the “catalyst” for County lowering its first page fee by $2.65. That theory requires a plaintiff to achieve, to some degree, its “primary objective.” The court here interprets Plaintiffs primary objective as stopping County from including indirect costs, not just any old fee reduction. If that was its objective, it failed and thus did not satisfy the test.
Posted by Michael Shipley at 11:02 AM No comments:
Labels: 27366, attorney fees, california public records research, catalyst theory, copies, costs, county of yolo, private attorney general
State of Cal. v. Superior Court, No. B276233 (D2d5 Oct. 13, 2016)
I like the Century Schoolbook font. It’s relatively spacious and easy to read in a brief. The SCOTUS rules and the Seventh Circuit’s typeface guide suggest it by name, and it’s an option under FRAP 32(a)(5)(A) and Cal. Rule of Court 8.204(b)(2) and (3). I write all my appellate briefs in it, so long as space is measured in a word count and it’s permitted under the applicable rules. It’s also arguably permitted in California trial courts under Rule of Court 2.105, but given Rule of Court 3.113(d)’ monstrous insistence on using page (not word) limits for law-and-motion memoranda, it’s just too much to sacrifice about 12 percent of the Rule’s already tight limit for the sake of having a nice font. (I tried for a few months back in 2011, but ultimately gave up the first time I had to oppose a summary judgment.)
In any event, given the Court of Appeal’s longstanding practice to publish opinions in stodgy Times New Roman, the choice of font on this D2d5 is out of the ordinary. But definitely not bad. Maybe it will be a thing.*
FWIW, this website and the book it is pitching have some great advice on typography for briefs.
Nothing on the merits, thanks.
*From some subsequent opinions, seems that all of D2 has made the move.
Labels: 3.113, 8.204, briefs, century schoolbook, font technology, times new roman
Posted by Michael Shipley at 12:20 PM No comments:
Gotek Energy Corp. v. SoCal IP Law Grp., No. B266684 (D2d6 Oct. 12, 2016)
Client hires “Law Firm #2” to bring a malpractice case against Law Firm #1—its prior patent counsel—for blowing a deadline for some patent applications. But Firm #2’s own complaint was filed after the one-year statute in Code of Civil Procedure § 340.6 had run. But that limit is tolled during the time an attorney-client relationship exists between the client/plaintiff and the attorney/defendant. So the issue in this case is when the relationship between Client and Firm #1 ended. Firm #1 claims the relationship ended when—a year and a week before this case was filed—it sent an email to Client informing Client that it needed to withdraw. The next day, Client replied by email to Firm #1, sting that it was terminating the relationship and demanding that Firm #1 immediately transfer the client file to new counsel. Client claims the date extended until the date its files were actually received by new counsel—364 days before the complaint in this case was filed.
The trial court sided with Firm #1, finding that the relationship ended when client said so. The fact that some ministerial work was done to transfer the files after Firm #1 was told it was terminated did not extend a confidential attorney client relationship until that work was complete. The trial court also awarded Firm #1 its fees under a fee provision in Client’s retainer agreement.
The Court of Appeal affirms. Tolling under § 340.6 stops when a client ceases to have any reasonable expectation that legal work will be performed. Given the unequivocal termination, the mere fact of the post-termination transfer of the client’s file did not provide a reasonable basis to believe that there was any kind of ongoing attorney-client relationship. The Court of Appeal further finds Client’s arguments against the fee award to be makeweight.
So the world inevitably await the malpractice case against the attorneys who blew the SOL on a malpractice case against some attorneys who blew the SOL on a patent filing. These guys really need to hire some counsel with a decent calendaring system.
Posted by Michael Shipley at 3:10 PM No comments:
Labels: 1717, 340.6, california code of civil procedure, fees, gotek energy, legal-mal, malpractice, socal ip law group, statutes of limitations
Potentially Overbroad Notice Does Not Render Class Not Ascertainable
Nicodemus v. St. Francis Memorial Hosp., No. A141500 (D1d4 Oct. 6, 2016)
Case is a class action dealing with access to medical records under Evidence Code § 1158, which requires a hospital to promptly give a patient’s medical records to her attorney on presentation of a written authorization form “prior to the filing of any action.” The patient needs to pay reasonable costs, which are defined in the statute. The whole point is to make a patient’s medical records available outside of discovery so her attorney can evaluate whether she has a claim.
Posted by Michael Shipley at 10:45 AM No comments:
Labels: 1158, ascertainability, california evidence code, class actions, class certification, nicodemus, predominance, st. francics memorial hospital, typiciality
Labels: 624, 998, california code of civil procedure, markow, rosner, special verdicts, verdict forms
This is a complicated and long running fight between two entities that appear to be jockeying to swindle a widow of her dead husband’s ASCAP and BMI songwriting royalties. After Party 1 won an arbitration, which Party 2 appealed but declined to post a bond to stay collection. Party 1 tried to levy against ASCAP and BMI, which responded by interpleading the royalty streams, obtaining a court-approved $238k, paid of the res, for the costs incurred in interpleading. See Code Civ. Proc. § 386 (permitting a discretionary award of fees for costs incurred in interpleading and obtaining discharge). But then the arb judgment got reversed, resulting in a ruling that Party 2 was entitled to the interplead funds. Party 2 then moved to recoup from Party 1 the fees paid to ASCAP and BMI under Code of Civil Procedure § 386.6, which permits gives the court discretion to allocate the interpleader’s fees to the claimants “as may appear proper.” The trial court denied the motion and Party 2 appeals.
The Court of Appeal affirms. It appears that there’s no transcript of the hearing on the fee motion, so the court’s terse minute order denying allocation is presumed to be correct and to include any implicit findings necessary to support it. Moreover, the circumstances supported denial. The only reason ASCAP and BMI interplead was because Party #2 took no effort to stay collection pending appeal. Had it posted a supersedeas bond, ASCAP and BMI would never have gotten involved and Party #2 could have recovered its bond cost from Party #1 as a recoverable cost. So, although a range of allocations between Parties #1 and #2 would fall within the reasonable exercise of the court’s discretion, that discretion wasn’t abused in denying Party #2 to recover part of the fees from Party #1.
Posted by Michael Shipley at 2:08 PM No comments:
Labels: 386, 386.6, arbitration, california code of civil procedure, fees, interpleader, omidvar, supersedeas, wertheim
Licudine v. Cedars-Sinai Med. Ctr., No. B268130 (D2d2 Sept. 29, 2016)
The court here affirms the grant of a motion for new trial on damages for a law student injured due to a surgical mistake, clarifying the applicable standard for awarding damages based on future earning capacity. So far as procedure goes, the court clarifies some issues with the difference between new trial and jnov motions as well as some evidentiary issues likely to recur on trial after remand.
Posted by Michael Shipley at 11:08 PM No comments:
Labels: 629, 659, california code of civil procedure, cedars-sinai, evidence, jnov, judicial notice, licudine, new trial, relevance
City of San Diego v. San Diegans for Open Gov’t, No. D068939 (on rehearing, Oct. 17, 2016)
San Diegans for Open Government—somewhat of a gadfly litigant in local matters down there—won an attorney fee award against the city in a validation action brought under Code of Civil Procedure § 861.1.
Posted by Michael Shipley at 9:49 PM No comments:
Labels: 1021.5, 861.1, 862, city of san diego, corporate status, corporation, private attorney general, san diegans for open government, standing, suspension, validation
Esparza v. Kaweah DeEsparza v. Kaweah Delta Dist. Hosp., No. F071761 (D5 Sept. 21, 2016)
When he wasn’t randomly digressing on the Warsaw Convention, my torts professor managed to say in pretty much every class—to the blank stares of 120 baffled 1Ls—“DON’T FORGET YOUR CODE CLAIM!” He must have sued the government a lot or something.
Posted by Michael Shipley at 4:34 PM No comments:
Labels: california code of civil procedure, code claims, esparza, kaweah delta district hospital, pleading, pleading standards
Perez v. U-Haul of Cal., No. B262029 (D2d7 Sept. 16, 2016)
The California Supreme Court held that PAGA claims aren’t arbitrable in the oft-cited Iskanian case. Defendant here raised a clever argument that, while a whole PAGA claim might not be, whether plaintiff is an “aggrieved employee”—a threshold issue that goes to whether PAGA even applies—can be the subject of an agreement to arbitrate. No dice. According to the court, nothing in Iskanian can be read to permit the hiving off of threshold issues and sending them to arbitration.
Posted by Michael Shipley at 10:50 PM No comments:
Labels: california code of civil procedure, class certification, iskanian, paga, perez, u-haul
Labels: 8.130, 8.137, access to courts, appellate record, court reporters, indigent litigants, mousseau, randall, reporter's transcript, separate statement
People ex rel Allstate Ins. Co. v. Dahan, No. B259799 (D2d3 Sept. 15, 2016)
This is kind of interesting. A relator wins a false claims act case in which the government declined to intervene. The losing defendant tries to argue that its liability on the judgment is improperly allocated between the relator and the government. But, as the court holds here, the defendant/debtor doesn’t have standing to complain about that. Regardless of who it owes to, its still owes. So it isn’t aggrieved by the allocation.
Labels: allocation, allstate, dahan, qui tam, standing
Penilla v. Westmont Corp., No. B262097 (D2d4 Sept. 9, 2016)
The court here finds an arbitration provision in a mobile home park rental agreement to be unconscionable. Procedurally unconscionable in that it did not disclose the expensive fees that a claimant would be expected to shoulder and because it was not provided in Spanish or explained to renters who couldn’t read English. And substantively unconscionable because it imposed steep fees to deter the residents from asserting claims and unreasonably shortened the statute of limitations. So the trial court correctly denied the park owner’s motion to compel.
Posted by Michael Shipley at 6:09 PM No comments:
Labels: arbitration, mobile home parks, motion to compel, penilla, unconscionable, westmont
Royal Alliance Assocs., Inc. v. Liebhaber, No. B264619 (D2d4 Aug. 30, 2016)
It’s pretty hard to get an arbitration award vacated. The arbitrator’s error, even a really really bad one, is not enough. But one way to do it is to show that the arbitrator refused even to hear evidence. Which is what happened here.
During an informal hearing, Party A gave an informal explanation of her conduct in an effort to exonerate herself. The opposing party had doubts about the veracity of those statements, and asked to question A. The arbitrators—it was a three arbitrator panel—said no, in reliance on the rules of their arbitral forum. They then proceeded to rule in A’s favor, specifically noting in their decision that the found A’s explanation to be credible.
That goes too far, even for arbitration. Code of Civil Procedure § 1286.2 requires vacation of an award when the arbitrators commit misconduct, exceed their powers, or refuse to hear evidence material to the dispute. Regardless of whether the panel complied with their own rules, refusing the hear relevant evidence—such as the cross examination of a witness whose credibility is key to the whole case—crosses a red line. See Code Civ. Proc. § 1286.2(a)(5).
Labels: 1286.2, arbitration, california code of civil procedure, liebhaber, refusal to hear evidence, royal alliance, vacation of arbitration awards
Posted by Michael Shipley at 1:00 PM No comments:
Greco v. Greco, No. C078369 (D3 Aug. 23, 2016)
In his capacity as trustee of his parents’ trust and estate, Son uses the trust’s funds to engage in a bunch of allegedly poorly conceived litigation against his Sister. Sister sues Son, alleging he’s breaching his duty of trustee by wasting the res. Son files an anti-SLAPP motion, which is denied. He appeals.
The Court of Appeal quite sensibly finds that the gist of the suit is the wrongful taking of funds from the trust and estates—as opposed to the litigation being bankrolled with that money—as thus that the case doesn’t arise from any protected activity. Because it is the taking that makes Son’s actions unlawful, that is the relevant conduct to the analysis. The sole exception was a claim for constructive fraud, which allegedly arises from Son’s misrepresentations about the lawsuit. Talking about a lawsuit is protected activity, so Son met the first part of the test on that claim.
As to the merits on the constructive fraud claim, the trial court hadn’t addressed them. It notes that the obvious bar to success—the litigation privilege in Civil Code § 47(b)—doesn’t apply because the statements at issue were not made to a court or any party to the litigation. Thus the case needed to be reversed for a determination of potential success on the merits as the the constructive fraud claim only.
Reversed and reminded, in limited part.
Labels: 425.16, 47(b), anti-SLAPP, california code of civil procedure, greco, litigation privilege, probate
Suarez v. Trigg Labs., Inc., No. B264511 (D2d4 Sept. 7, 2016)
Settlement discussions are included within the anti-SLAPP statute’s protection as “any written or oral statement or writing made in connection with an issue under consideration or review” by a judicial body. See Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 425.16(e)(2). Thus, cases that arise from allegations of fraud during settlement talks meet the “arising from protected activity” requirement of the anti-SLAPP statute. And since Plaintiff in this case declined to even try to make a showing on the merits, the motion was appropriately granted.
Posted by Michael Shipley at 3:00 AM No comments:
Labels: 425.16, anti-SLAPP, arising from, fraud, settlements, suarez, trigg labs
A recently enacted statute addressing mortgage litigation permits the award of attorneys’ fees to a prevailing borrower. Te Homeowner here won a PI, and claims that she was entitled to an immediate interim fee award. The trial court denied the request and the Homeowner took an interlocutory appeal. But regardless of whether the Homeowner was right about the statute’s authorizing awards of interim fees, nothing in the Code makes the denial of such a request immediately appealable. Although Homeowner argued that the appellate jurisdiction statute—Code of Civil Procedure § 904.1—makes various kinds non-final orders immediately appealable, the order here isn’t one of them.
Posted by Michael Shipley at 1:34 PM No comments:
Labels: 904.1, appealability, california code of civil procedure, interlocutory appeals, sese, wells fargo
Young v. REMX, Inc. No. A143786 (D1d5 Aug. 17, 2016)
The denial of a motion to compel arbitration is immediately appealable. See Code Civ. Proc. § 1294(a). But an order granting a motion to compel isn’t. And—as the court here explains—an order that stays certain non-arbitrable claims while a compelled arbitration is pending isn’t immediately appealable either. Just like with a grant of a motion to compel, the decision to stay can be addressed and challenged at the end of the road, once a final judgment is entered. There’s no good reason to jump the gun.
Posted by Michael Shipley at 9:45 AM No comments:
Labels: 1294, appealability, arbitration, motion to compel, remx, stays, young
La Mirada Neighborhood Assoc. of Hollywood v. City of LA, No B258033 (D2d7 Aug. 16, 2016)
Generally, an action that moots a controversy while an appeal is pending results only in the dismissal of the appeal. But when legislative or regulatory changes make a matter moot, sometimes it’s warranted to order the trial court to vacate the underlying judgment, such that the dismissal of the appeal doesn’t result in an automatic affirmance of a judgment whose legal legs had been cut out from under it. But the rule doesn’t apply when, like here, the government body that takes the action to moot the case is also the appellant. In those cases, dismissal of the appeal is all that’s warranted.
Labels: city of la, la mirada neighborhood association, mootness, vacatur
Posted by Michael Shipley at 10:35 AM No comments:
Posted by Michael Shipley at 9:28 PM No comments:
Laffitte v. Robert Half Int’l, No. S222996 (Cal. Aug. 11, 2016)
A long time ago, in Serrano v. Priest, 20 Cal. 3d 25 (1977)—Serrano III, the first two Serranos being about equal educational opportunity in public schools—the California Supreme Court ruled that the lodestar method (hours times reasonable rate) is the proper means of calculating an attorney fee award under the private attorney general doctrine. What happens when the award is not based on the private attorney general statute, but instead under the “common fund” doctrine—where one party obtains a pool of recovery to the collective benefit of a group of potential plaintiffs? Is the plaintiffs’ attorney stuck with a lodestar, or can he argue instead that he is entitled to a percentage of the overall recovery, even if that significantly exceeds the lodestar.
Posted by Michael Shipley at 7:40 AM No comments:
Labels: attorney fees, class actions, laffitte, lodestar, percentage, robert half, serrano
Service on DeadCo's Authorized Agent Is Service Nonetheless
Pulte Homes Corp. v. Williams Mechanical, Inc., No. E064710 (D4d2 Aug. 9, 2016)
A defunct plumbing company whose charter had been suspended got sued for negligent performance of a contract. Plaintiff served its designated agent, who did nothing because the company was basically a dead letter. Plaintiff took a default.
The company, however, did have some insurance. After finding out about the default, the carrier retained counsel for the defunct company and moved for relief from default under Code of Civil Procedure § 473(b), which was granted by the trial court. But the Court of Appeal reverses.
Section 473(b) requires the motion to be filed within six months of the order to be vacated. The motion here was filed more than six months after the entry of default, although less than six months after a default judgment was entered. The court holds that the earlier date was the key one. Vacating a default judgment isn’t worth much unless you can also vacate the underlying default.
The court also rejects a challenge under § 473.5, which permits the setting aside of a default when the defendant never received actual notice. Here, there’s no question that the registered agent of the company was properly served. While service on an entity’s attorney might not be enough to give actual notice, when an attorney is also a designated agent, that service is sufficient to give the corporation actual notice as a matter of law. Even if the attorney neglects to inform the company’s principals because the company had gone out of business.
Finally, the court declines to award equitable relief from default on grounds of extrinsic mistake. That relief is available only under “rare circumstances” where the moving party is inequitably denied a hearing. To obtain the relief, the moving/defaulted party needs to show: (1) that its defense has merit; (2) a satisfactory excuse for not presenting the defense in the original action; and (3) that it acted diligently to set aside the default once discovered. There’s a threshold issue here that Defendant didn’t really raise extrinsic mistake until its reply brief, although two elements (excuse and timeliness) were discussed on the opening brief in connection with the 473.5 issue. The court finds that Defendant forfeited the argument on the meritorious-ness element. And in any event, Defendant didn’t meet the burden of showing either a satisfactory excuse or diligence.
Posted by Michael Shipley at 3:49 PM No comments:
Labels: 473.5, 473(b), california code of civil procedure, extrinsic mistake, pulte homes, williams mechanical
Cruz v. City of Culver City, No. B265690 (D2d8 Aug. 8, 2016)
We’ve had a pretty good run of decent anti-SLAPP decisions lately, so I guess I shouldn’t be too disappointed with this one. But it’s a real stinker.
Plaintiffs sued a city for violating the Brown Act by taking official actions that weren’t on its meeting agendas. The City filed an anti-SLAPP motion. According to the Court Appeal, the public interest litigation exception in Code of Civil Procedure § 425.17(b) does not apply to any party “seeking any personal relief.” Because the substantive city issue under consideration that Plaintiffs contend resulted in the Brown Act violations—something about parking regulations—was an issue in which Plaintiffs had some financial interest, the court finds that the exception does not apply.
Plaintiffs’ then apparently conceded that the case actually arises from protected activity. They disastrously failed to anticipate City of Montebello—decided by the Supreme Court on the same day this opinion was ordered published—which made abundantly clear that actions challenging the official legislative actions of governments (as opposed to individual capacity suits against government officials) don’t “arise from protected activity” under the anti-SLAPP statute.
The court goes on to find that plaintiffs failed to establish a probability of prevailing to prevail in their Brown Act challenge.
This is a terrible precedent. There’s still a motion to modify pending. We'll see.
Posted by Michael Shipley at 5:36 PM No comments:
Labels: 425.17, anti-SLAPP, arising from, cruz, culver city, montebello, public interest exception
Posted by Michael Shipley at 11:19 AM No comments:
City of Montebello v. Vasquez, No. S219052 (Cal. Aug.8, 2016).
Another big anti-SLAPP opinion drops from the Cal. Supremes.
Labels: (e)(4), anti-SLAPP, california code of civil procedure, montebello, protected activity, SLAPP, vasquez, voting
Ignacio v. Caracciolo, No. B266930 (D2d8 Aug. 3, 2016)
This is another case where an insurance company gets over its skis by making a Code of Civil Procedure § 998 offer of judgment that tries to do more than just enter judgment in the case along the terms of the offer. This time, the offer includes an agreement to a broad general release, including a waiver of unknown claims under Civil Code § 1542. Plaintiff didn’t take the deal. At trial, Insurer won a verdict below the offer’s cash consideration, so it sought cost shifting. On appeal, the Court of Appeal finds the offer invalid. Problem is, when a release is broader than the claims in the case, the value of the offer vs. what was won at trail can’t really be rationally compared. Suppose, for instance, that plaintiff had some multi-million dollar claim against the insurer on some other issue that wasn’t in the case. Since the release offered was far broader than the case with respect to the releasing parties, the released parties, and the claims being released, it couldn’t be fairly valued under the § 998 calculus.
Posted by Michael Shipley at 10:22 PM No comments:
Labels: 1542, 998, california code of civil procedure, caracciolo, ignacio, offer of judgment, releases
John Doe 2 v. Superior Court, No. B269087 (D2d3 Aug. 2, 2016)
The anti-SLAPP statute provides for an automatic stay of discovery. See Code Civ. Proc. § 425.16(g). The court has discretion to permit limited discovery on showing of good cause, but orders doing so are few and far between. In particular, when a defamation case is met with an anti-SLAPP motion, prior cases have established that, before it can get relief from the discovery stay, plaintiff needs to make a prima facie showing that the statement was provably false, defamatory in meaning, and unprivileged.
Defendant Doe here used an anonymous Gmail account to send emails to a party with whom Plaintiff was enmeshed in a business dispute. Plaintiff sued anonymously, alleging that the Doe’s emails were defamatory. Plaintiff subpoenaed Doe’s account-holder information from Google. When Doe got notice of that, he appeared and filed an anti-SLAPP motion, which put the kybosh on any discovery. But Plaintiff moved to lift the stay under § 425.16(g) and the trial court agreed. But Doe took a writ, which the court here grants.
As noted, to get discovery over Doe’s identity, Plaintiff needed to affirmatively show that the statements were false, capable of defamatory meaning, and unprivileged. It didn’t meet that burden here. Nor did the court buy Plaintiff’s back-up argument—that it needed to discover who Defendant was to know if he might have been a party to an arbitration agreement. Whatever interest Plaintiff had in some theoretical right to compel arbitration didn’t overcome the protections that § 425.16(g) gives to the right to free and anonymous expression.
Labels: 425.16, 425.16(g), anti-SLAPP, discovery stay, doe defendants, gmail, john doe 2, SLAPP discovery
Baral v. Schnitt, No. S225090 (Cal. Aug. 1, 2016)
In first of several pending cases addressing the anti-SLAPP statute, the Supreme Court resolves a longstanding split about how to handle so-called “mixed” causes of action. That is, causes of action that implicate both protected and unprotected activity. I’ve discussed this split previously here and here, as well as in my original post on the Court of Appeal’s decision in this case.
In a cogent analysis focusing on both the text and the practicalities of the issue, the Court ultimately adopts the current minority rule.
Labels: 425.16, anti-SLAPP, arising from, baral, california code of civil procedure, california supreme court, mann, mixed causes of action, schnitt