Primary practice area
Fifth District holds that CC&Rs adopted by a public hospital district cannot be enforced to prohibit a clinic from providing abortion services because such enforcement would violate the California Constitution’s reproductive freedom guarantee and Civil Code section 531.
First District holds that DMV’s post-2022 single-hearing-officer model does not violate due process and that the constitutional impartiality standard is more demanding than appearance of bias, expressly disagreeing with the Romane line of cases now under California Supreme Court review.
Second District holds that a jury’s not-true findings on personal firearm use and a robbery special circumstance do not collaterally estop a resentencing court from finding the defendant was the actual killer in a Penal Code section 1172.6 hearing, applying People v. Santamaria and joining People v. Hart.
Second District holds that the family law court retains discretion under Family Code sections 2030 and 2032 to consider parties’ relative financial circumstances when fixing attorney’s fees, even where a marital settlement agreement contains a contractual prevailing party fee clause.
Second District grants habeas petition vacating murder conviction where prosecutor failed to correct false eyewitness testimony about prior police identifications and defense counsel failed to impeach with the witnesses’ actual statements, applying the Supreme Court’s recent Glossip v. Oklahoma decision.
Fourth District holds that a curative notice in a wage and hour class action must warn employees who rescind individual settlement agreements that they may be required to repay the settlement consideration if the employer prevails, applying California Civil Code rescission statutes rather than federal class action precedents.
Second District holds that the seal on a California False Claims Act qui tam complaint lifts automatically after the statutory 60-day period absent a government request for extension, and that any seal violations are not grounds for sustaining a demurrer.
First District affirms summary judgment for City of San Rafael in dangerous condition case where teenage driver hydroplaned on wet curve, holding the conditions were open and obvious as a matter of law and that plaintiff could not defeat summary judgment by raising new pavement-defect theories outside the pleadings.
Sixth District affirms nonsuit for Tesla in case where toddler started Model X and ran over his pregnant mother, holding that the consumer expectations test does not apply to complex modern vehicle safety systems and the plaintiff failed to identify any specific design feature that violated ordinary consumer expectations.
First District holds that the discharge of an earlier CEQA writ necessarily decided the adequacy of Caltrans’s revised analysis of impacts on Richardson Grove redwoods, barring petitioners from relitigating those impacts in a third writ proceeding.