Allen Broussard

The case concerned whether a court commissioner could preside over a capital murder trial in superior court without an express oral or written stipulation from the defendant, where defense counsel had proceeded to trial without objection despite knowing the presiding officer was a commissioner. The California Supreme Court denied habeas relief, holding that the constitutional requirement for a stipulation to authorize a commissioner to act as a temporary judge can be satisfied by implied consent inferred from counsel's conduct. The court reasoned that the right to a regularly elected or appointed judge is not a fundamental personal right that must be personally waived by the defendant after admonition, but rather one that counsel may effectively stipulate to on the client's behalf. It distinguished this from rights requiring explicit personal waiver and noted that the commissioner had followed standard practice of confirming stipulations with counsel.

criminal lawprocedure

This case concerned whether plaintiffs could obtain a default judgment against defendants in a housing discrimination lawsuit alleging refusal to rent an apartment due to a signal dog for a deaf tenant, without first serving a statement of damages under Code of Civil Procedure sections 425.10 and 425.11. The trial court set aside the default and judgment for lack of such notice, but the Court of Appeal partially reinstated it; the Supreme Court reversed, holding that notice is required. The court reasoned that the action sought damages for emotional distress and thus qualified as a personal injury case under the statutes, which prohibit stating damage amounts in the complaint but mandate separate notice before default to allow defendants to respond. Plaintiffs' complaint and proof focused on mental and emotional distress, triggering the notice obligation, so the default was invalid without it.

civil rightsprocedure

The case involved the conviction of Brett Patrick Pensinger for the first-degree murder of infant Michelle Melander and the kidnappings of Michelle and her five-year-old brother, along with special circumstance allegations that the murder occurred during a kidnapping and involved torture. The Supreme Court of California affirmed the convictions for murder and kidnapping as well as the kidnapping-murder special circumstance based on evidence that the defendant abducted the children after a confrontation over a stolen rifle and drove off with them. The court reversed the torture-murder special circumstance for lack of sufficient proof but upheld the death penalty, determining that the remaining valid special circumstance supported the sentence and that claims regarding hypnosis of witnesses, evidence handling, and counsel performance did not require reversal.

criminal law

The case involved defendant Jackson Chambers Daniels, Jr., who was convicted of first-degree murder of two Riverside police officers sent to arrest him after his prior bank robbery conviction was affirmed, along with related drug and firearm possession charges. The jury found multiple special circumstances, including multiple murders, murder to avoid arrest, and murder of peace officers, and imposed the death penalty, triggering an automatic appeal. The court reviewed numerous claims regarding evidentiary rulings, jury instructions, prosecutorial arguments, and penalty phase procedures during both guilt and penalty trials, ultimately addressing issues such as the admissibility of prior crimes evidence, expert testimony, and notice requirements under California law.

criminal lawprocedure

The case concerned whether a counteroffer by defendants automatically revoked a plaintiff's statutory settlement offer under Code of Civil Procedure section 998 in a personal injury lawsuit, and whether section 1013 extended the 30-day acceptance period by five days when the offer was served by mail. The court held that a counteroffer does not revoke or terminate a section 998 offer, which remains available for acceptance until expressly withdrawn by the offeror or deemed withdrawn under the statute's terms. It further concluded that section 1013 does not apply to section 998 offers, so the acceptance period runs from the date of service by mail without extension. The reasoning centered on the legislative purpose of section 998 to promote settlements while preserving the offer's viability during negotiations, and on the plain language distinguishing statutory deadlines from general response extensions.

proceduretorts & liability

In this habeas corpus petition, the defendant, previously convicted of murder with a special circumstance and sentenced to death, claimed he was denied effective assistance of counsel because his trial attorney failed to adequately investigate psychiatric defenses for the guilt and sanity phases or mitigating evidence for the penalty phase. After an evidentiary hearing before a referee, the court adopted the finding that counsel's investigation of mental defenses at the guilt and sanity phases met minimum professional standards. The court declined to decide whether the penalty-phase investigation was deficient, concluding instead that the defendant had not shown prejudice under the Strickland standard, as there was no reasonable probability that additional investigation would have produced a different outcome at the penalty phase. The petition was therefore denied.

criminal law

This case involved a county employee whose application for service-connected disability retirement benefits was denied by the Board of Retirement. After the superior court overturned the denial and awarded attorney fees under Government Code section 31536, the Board appealed, and the Court of Appeal affirmed on the merits but denied fees for the appellate work. The California Supreme Court granted review to determine whether section 31536 permits recovery of attorney fees incurred on appeal by a successful applicant. The Court held that such fees are recoverable, reasoning that similar statutory fee provisions have consistently been interpreted to include appellate fees and that excluding them would undermine the statute's purpose of assisting applicants against government entities with in-house counsel.

labor & employmentprocedure

This case concerned whether California hospitals could allow clinical psychologists to assume primary responsibility for the diagnosis and treatment of their patients in psychiatric wards, or if regulations requiring a psychiatrist to oversee all such patients were valid. The Supreme Court of California upheld the trial court's decision invalidating the Department of Health Services regulations that mandated psychiatrist oversight. The core reasoning was that Health and Safety Code section 1316.5, enacted in 1978 and amended in 1980, explicitly permits psychologists to handle responsibilities within their licensure scope without discrimination when services overlap with those of physicians, and the regulations conflicted with this statutory language and intent. The court noted that a physician would still handle any necessary medical care outside the psychologist's scope.

healthcarebusiness & regulatory

The case involved defendant Richard Raymond Ramirez's automatic appeal from a judgment of death after a jury convicted him of first-degree murder, rape, and sodomy of Kimberly Gonzalez, with true findings on rape-murder and sodomy-murder special circumstances under California's 1978 death penalty law. The California Supreme Court reviewed multiple claims, including ineffective assistance of counsel regarding the handling of a prior concealed-weapon conviction, the admissibility of prior crimes as aggravating factors, and the adequacy of penalty-phase jury instructions. The court rejected these arguments, holding that trial counsel's performance was not deficient, that the prior conviction was properly treated as a felony for sentencing purposes, and that the instructions correctly guided the jury's weighing of aggravating and mitigating circumstances without error. As a result, the judgment of death was affirmed.

criminal law

The case involved Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E) suing Bear Stearns for intentional interference with contractual relations and prospective economic advantage, alleging that Bear Stearns induced Placer County Water Agency to pursue litigation seeking to terminate an early long-term power purchase contract before 2013. The trial court sustained Bear Stearns's demurrer and dismissed the complaint, but the Court of Appeal reversed as to those two causes of action. The California Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeal, holding that no tort cause of action lies where the alleged interference consists solely of inducing a party to bring potentially meritorious litigation to determine contractual rights. The core reasoning was that permitting such claims would improperly expand tort liability and create an unconstitutional barrier to the fundamental right of access to the courts under the state and federal constitutions.

torts & liabilityprocedurecivil rights

The case involved Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas) seeking approval from the California Public Utilities Commission to recover costs from a $7.4 million buyout of an unfavorable long-term gas supply contract with Getty Synthetic Fuels. The commission ordered SoCalGas to produce 15 confidential attorney memos analyzing early termination options or withdraw its application, ruling that SoCalGas had impliedly waived attorney-client privilege by applying for cost recovery. The court held that the attorney-client privilege applies to these proceedings and that SoCalGas did not waive it, because it explicitly stated it would not rely on counsel's advice as justification for the buyout and did not disclose a significant part of any privileged communications. The commission's order for in camera review was also found to violate Evidence Code section 915, which prohibits compelled disclosure of privileged materials to assess the privilege claim itself.

business & regulatoryprocedure

The case involved defendant Lawrence Bittaker, who along with accomplice Roy Norris kidnapped, raped, tortured, and murdered five teenage girls in the Los Angeles area between June and October 1979. Bittaker was convicted on 26 felony counts, including five first-degree murders, multiple kidnappings and rapes, and other sexual offenses, with the jury finding 38 special circumstances such as multiple murders, felony-murder, and torture. The trial court sentenced him to death, and on automatic appeal the California Supreme Court affirmed both the convictions and the death sentence. The court upheld the verdicts after reviewing the extensive evidence, primarily from Norris's testimony under a plea bargain, and rejected claims of error including prosecutorial misconduct in closing arguments and other procedural issues during the guilt and penalty phases.

criminal lawprocedure

The case involved Viking Pools, Inc., which installed a fiberglass pool for customers under a contract that included a 10-year express warranty for defects in materials or installation. After brown spots and blisters developed on the pool surface, Viking refused to make repairs, prompting the Contractors’ State License Board to file a disciplinary accusation alleging violations of Business and Professions Code sections 7107 (abandonment of a construction project) and 7113 (material failure to complete a project for the contract price). The California Supreme Court held that breach of an express written warranty qualifies as grounds for discipline under those sections. The court reasoned that the statutory phrase “construction project or operation” is defined by the parties’ contractual agreement, that the 1980 amendment to section 7091 confirmed the Legislature’s intent to include warranty breaches, and that this interpretation advances the law’s consumer-protection purpose.

business & regulatoryprocedure

The case involved defendant Donald Griffin, who was convicted in Fresno County Superior Court of the first-degree murder of his 12-year-old stepdaughter Kelly W., along with rape, sodomy, and lewd acts on a child, with special circumstance findings that the murder occurred during those sexual offenses and that he used a knife. The prosecution presented evidence of the victim's body showing signs of sexual assault and strangulation, blood matching the victim found in the defendant's truck, and incriminating statements by the defendant. On automatic appeal, the California Supreme Court affirmed the convictions and special circumstance findings, concluding that the evidence was sufficient, the search of the defendant's truck was lawful under the instrumentality exception to the warrant requirement, and various evidentiary and instructional challenges lacked merit. However, the court reversed the death penalty determination due to error in the jury instruction regarding the governor's commutation power, as established in People v. Ramos.

criminal lawprocedure

The case concerned whether the California Legislature could validly direct the Department of Health Services to implement Welfare and Institutions Code section 14005.16—which limits consideration of income for Medi-Cal eligibility of institutionalized spouses to their community property share—only to the extent it does not conflict with federal Medicaid law, consistent with article III, section 3.5(c) of the California Constitution. The court held that such legislative directions to agencies are permissible. The core reasoning was that the constitutional provision aims to prevent agencies from refusing to execute statutes, not to bar the Legislature from conditioning implementation on consistency with federal requirements; the statute's own limiting language and the agency's resulting actions therefore did not violate separation of powers. The opinion reviewed the statute's enactment, federal waiver denials, and Ninth Circuit rulings confirming no actual conflict with federal rules.

healthcarefederal power

In People v. Cruz, the defendant pleaded guilty to felony heroin possession pursuant to a plea bargain that capped his potential sentence, but he failed to appear for sentencing and was later apprehended. The trial court withdrew approval of the bargain, imposed a two-year prison term exceeding the agreed terms, and denied the defendant's motion to withdraw his plea under Penal Code section 1192.5. The California Supreme Court held that section 1192.5 applies even when a defendant fails to appear, entitling him to withdraw the plea if the court rejects the bargain, because the statute contains no exception for non-appearance and separate criminal sanctions under sections 1320 and 1320.5 address flight. The decision follows from the statute's text requiring withdrawal upon disapproval and from precedent such as People v. Johnson, which rejected any unclean-hands limitation on the right to withdraw.

criminal lawprocedure

This case involves the conviction of Phillip Louis Lucero for two counts of first-degree murder of young girls and one count of arson, plus a multiple-murder special circumstance, resulting in a death sentence under California's 1978 death penalty law. The court affirmed the guilt-phase convictions based on the evidence presented at trial, including forensic findings and witness testimony linking the defendant to the crimes. However, it reversed the death verdict and remanded for a new penalty trial due to errors in the exclusion of mitigating evidence during the penalty phase. The opinion also addressed the prosecutor's misleading arguments that improperly characterized the circumstances of the crime and absence of certain mitigating factors as aggravating, though the reversal rested on the evidentiary issue.

criminal lawprocedure

The case concerned whether San Francisco could impose its Transit Impact Development Fee (TIDF) ordinance, enacted in 1981, on three downtown office projects whose building permits had been approved in 1979. The permits included a condition requiring the developers to participate in a downtown assessment district or similar mechanism to fund transit services if established by the city. The California Supreme Court held that the TIDF qualifies as such a mechanism and therefore could be applied to the projects without violating the developers' vested rights. The court reasoned that the permit language was broad enough to encompass the TIDF, which was designed to offset increased transit demand from new office space, and that the developers had notice of potential future transit funding obligations through the environmental review process under CEQA.

business & regulatoryproperty

This case concerned whether plaintiffs were entitled to attorney fees under Code of Civil Procedure section 1021.5 after obtaining a preliminary injunction that barred public schools from reporting noncitizen children's immigration status to federal authorities under former Education Code section 6957. The trial court awarded the fees, but the Court of Appeal reversed on jurisdictional grounds and because it found the plaintiffs were not successful litigants. The California Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeal, holding that dismissal of the underlying action did not divest the trial court of jurisdiction to award fees, that the preliminary injunction made the plaintiffs successful litigants who enforced an important right, and that the lack of specific findings on the fee calculation was not reversible error.

immigrationcivil rightsprocedure

The case involved a firefighter who claimed he suffered a disabling stroke due to harassment, demotion, and disciplinary actions by his fire district employer and assistant chief, allegedly in retaliation for his union activities, and he sued for intentional infliction of emotional distress and related torts. The trial court dismissed the claims on demurrer, the Court of Appeal affirmed as to most causes of action, and the California Supreme Court held that claims based on conduct normally occurring in the workplace fall within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Workers' Compensation Appeals Board. The court reasoned that the workers' compensation system provides the sole remedy for such injuries, which are compensable regardless of employer fault, and that permitting parallel civil actions would conflict with the Labor Code's exclusive remedy provisions. Claims for defamation and false light invasion of privacy were allowed to proceed separately.

labor & employmenttorts & liability