The case involved a minor student, C.A., who sued a public high school, its district, and a guidance counselor for alleged sexual harassment, abuse, and molestation by the counselor, asserting claims including negligence, negligent supervision and hiring, sexual battery, assault, and sexual harassment. The trial court sustained the school district's demurrer without leave to amend and dismissed the claims against the district, ruling that the counselor's misconduct fell outside the scope of employment and that no statute authorized direct or vicarious liability against the public entity for the alleged acts. On appeal, the court examined Government Code sections 815 and 815.2, determining that a public entity is generally not liable for employee torts absent a statute, but could face vicarious liability for an administrator's negligent hiring, supervision, or retention if those failures occurred within the scope of the administrator's duties, even though the underlying sexual misconduct did not. The opinion emphasized that liability would attach to the district's own negligence in failing to protect students from known risks, not to the counselor's intentional acts.
This case is a marital dissolution action in which the wife appealed the trial court's characterization of the husband's post-separation law firm partnership distributions as his separate property. The Court of Appeal reversed in part, holding that a portion of the 2004 partnership distributions constituted community property subject to division. The court reasoned that compensation for services performed during the marriage accrues to the community even if the right to receive payment is not finally determined or distributed until after separation, drawing on precedent that focuses on when the benefit is earned rather than when it vests or is paid under the partnership agreement. The matter was remanded for redetermination of related support, reimbursement, and property division orders.
The Antounians sued Louis Vuitton/Dior and their law firm for malicious prosecution after the manufacturers voluntarily dismissed them from a 2006 federal trademark counterfeiting lawsuit involving alleged sales of fake goods at the Antounians' Bijou Palace store in Santee Alley. The federal action had included erroneous investigative reports that misattributed counterfeiting activity to the Antounians' location, leading to Burberry's dismissal of claims and a later voluntary dismissal by Louis Vuitton/Dior conditioned on payment of the Antounians' attorney fees. The trial court granted the defendants' separate anti-SLAPP motions to strike the malicious prosecution complaint under Code of Civil Procedure section 425.16. On appeal, the court reviewed the facts of the underlying litigation, including the denial of the Antounians' summary judgment motion and the extent to which probable cause existed despite the identified errors in the complaints.
This case involved a dependency petition filed by the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services after an 18-month-old child died in a car accident caused when her father drove her unsecured by any child safety restraint. The juvenile court asserted jurisdiction over the child's two surviving siblings under Welfare and Institutions Code section 300, subdivisions (f) and (j), but dismissed related allegations under subdivision (b). The Court of Appeal affirmed jurisdiction under subdivision (f), holding that the statute requires only that a parent's neglect caused the child's death and does not demand proof of criminal negligence. It also held that the juvenile court erred by dismissing the subdivision (b) allegations, which were a necessary predicate for the subdivision (j) findings, and ordered those allegations reinstated and sustained.
This case concerned a mother's appeal from an order terminating her parental rights to her son under Welfare and Institutions Code section 366.26 in a Los Angeles County juvenile dependency proceeding. The mother argued that notice was inadequate under the Indian Child Welfare Act because the children's paternal grandmother had mentioned possible Native American ancestry. The Court of Appeal affirmed the termination order. It held that the grandmother's statement—that she could not identify the tribe and had no living relatives with more information—was too vague, attenuated, and speculative to give the court any reason to believe the children might be Indian children, and therefore no further ICWA inquiry or notice was required.
The case was a wrongful death action brought by the family of William Saller, who died of mesothelioma after alleged exposure to asbestos-containing pipe insulation manufactured by Crown (via its acquisition of Mundet) at his workplace and to joint compound made by Bondex for home use. The trial court declined to instruct the jury on the consumer expectations test for design defect or on failure to warn, resulting in a defense verdict. The Court of Appeal reversed, concluding that the consumer expectations test was appropriate because the ordinary knowledge of the product's characteristics could support an inference that it did not perform as safely as expected, and that the failure-to-warn instructions were also warranted on the record presented.
