Cites Keena v. United RailRoads of San Francisco — APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of the City and County of San Francisco. Bernard J. Flood, Judge. Reversed.
Cites In Re Estate of Thompson — APPEAL from an order of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County admitting a will to probate. Lewis R. Works, Judge. Reversed.
The case involved defendant William C. Borchers, who was indicted on multiple counts of larceny and embezzlement arising from his dealings with complainant Sarah M. Garrigus, including her delivery of a $2000 check and an unfilled note form in connection with a proposed loan and stock subscription arranged through Borchers. After some counts were abandoned, Borchers was convicted on four embezzlement counts; the trial court denied his motion for a new trial and entered judgment. The California Supreme Court reversed the convictions on counts one, five, and nine for insufficient evidence that the property belonged to the complainant or that Borchers was her agent or bailee, but affirmed the conviction on count three. For count three, the court reasoned that the evidence showed Borchers received the note as Garrigus's agent, was authorized to fill in its blanks, and then converted the completed instrument to his own use.
This case involved a husband's action for divorce on grounds of extreme cruelty and the wife's cross-complaint for separate maintenance also alleging cruelty. The trial court found the husband's allegations true and the wife's untrue but denied a divorce to either party while awarding fees and costs to the wife. On appeal, the court held that when the evidence adequately supports and corroborates the complaint's allegations of cruelty, the trial court has no authority to arbitrarily refuse to grant the divorce. The court therefore reversed the judgment and directed entry of an interlocutory decree of divorce for the husband on grounds of extreme cruelty, along with appropriate orders for child custody, support, and property division.
In People v. Selby, Norman Selby was charged with the murder of Theresa W. Moers but convicted of manslaughter after a trial in Los Angeles County; he appealed the conviction and the denial of his motion for a new trial. The defendant argued that the deceased had died by suicide or accident during a struggle over a gun, and he challenged the admission of testimony about conversations between the deceased and her ex-husband shortly before her death, as well as jury instructions on the corpus delicti and the use of his extrajudicial statements. The court held that the conversations were properly admitted not to prove motive but to show the deceased's state of mind and refute the suicide theory, that the corpus delicti need only be shown by prima facie evidence before considering confessions, and that the jury could consider all evidence together in reaching its verdict. It also found no error in an oral instruction given during deliberations encouraging open discussion. The judgment and order were affirmed.
This case involved a claim by General Motors Acceptance Corporation against a sheriff for damages from the attachment of two automobiles that had been left in the possession of the Modesto Motor Company. GMAC asserted ownership based on assignments of conditional sales contracts from the Modesto Motor Company, but the trial court ruled for the sheriff and the district court of appeal reversed. The California Supreme Court affirmed the judgment for the sheriff, holding that GMAC failed to prove it had complied with the Motor Vehicle Act's requirements for transferring title through re-registration of the vehicles. The court reasoned that under the Act, title does not pass and the transfer is not effective until the required registration steps are completed, and GMAC offered no evidence of such compliance despite the time that had elapsed before the attachment. Because GMAC could not establish its ownership or right to possession, it could not prevail in the conversion action.
The case involved petitioners seeking a writ of mandate to compel the Secretary of State to file articles of incorporation authorizing an all-nonpar-value stock issue, after the Secretary refused based on prior decisions and state constitutional provisions requiring shares of a single par value. The court granted the writ and ordered filing, determining that an entirely nonpar stock structure does not violate sections 3 and 12 of article XII of the California Constitution. The core reasoning was that those provisions permit stockholder liability to be computed on a numerical share basis (rather than exclusively a monetary one) so long as every share represents an identical interest and a unity of liability exists among all shares. The court distinguished earlier rulings that had addressed mixed par and nonpar classes, noting they did not resolve the validity of uniform nonpar stock.
The case concerned a habeas corpus petition by an individual convicted in state superior court for violating the Wright Act by selling intoxicating liquor, resulting in a sentence of a $1,000 fine or, in default, six months in county jail; the court had stayed execution of this sentence for fifteen months to follow a concurrent federal sentence of fifteen months in the same jail. After completing the federal term and being released, the petitioner was rearrested and imprisoned under the state judgment, prompting challenges that the stay was invalid, the sentence improperly cumulative, and the term already served. The court discharged the writ and remanded the petitioner to custody, reasoning that the stay order was void because it was not issued as part of probation under Penal Code section 1203, the alternative imprisonment provision was a valid means of enforcing the fine under state precedent, and the federal-state sentence interaction did not render the state judgment satisfied or unenforceable. The decision relied on distinctions from cases involving direct imprisonment sentences and held that the petitioner remained subject to the original state commitment.
