Primary practice area
Fifth District enforces a janitorial worker’s mutual arbitration agreement and explains how trial courts should distinguish, but document their departures from, binding California Court of Appeal precedent like Cook v. USC.
Second District affirms denial of an anti-SLAPP motion in a family corporation dispute and reaffirms that orders denying related attorney fee motions are not separately appealable, deepening a split with other appellate divisions.
Fourth District holds that California’s one-year statute of frauds applies to oral and implied joint venture agreements and affirms summary judgment for Scripps scientists in a biotech startup dispute with a venture capitalist.
Third District holds that an attorney with a competing lien can bring a single declaratory relief action against both the client and the prior attorney to resolve the validity, amount, and priority of all attorney liens on settlement proceeds.
Second District holds that a hospital’s expired 2004 contract with Kaiser was admissible in a quantum meruit dispute over emergency reimbursement and that prejudgment interest in such actions is 7 percent, not 10 percent.
Second District holds that evidence of prior branch failures from same-species street trees in the same neighborhood is admissible to prove a city’s notice of a dangerous condition under Government Code section 835.
First District affirms UC Berkeley’s expulsion of a student in a non-Title IX sexual misconduct case, holding that any limit on direct cross-examination at the campus hearing was harmless given the prior criminal preliminary hearing.
Second District holds that a recorded golf cart easement was not abandoned when the country club rerouted the path and that the easement was prescriptively expanded to include hedge and landscaping maintenance.
Fourth District affirms a pet custody order but imposes $5,000 in sanctions on counsel for repeatedly citing AI-generated fake cases and reports the conduct to the State Bar of California.
Second District affirms a $51 million asbestos-talc verdict against Avon Products and holds that Avon’s appellate brief forfeited its sufficiency-of-the-evidence challenge by failing to fairly summarize the trial evidence.