Donald Richard Wright

In Baker v. Wadsworth, three boilermakers employed by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power refused to cross a union picket line at their workplace and were terminated after seven consecutive days of unauthorized absence under Civil Service Commission Rule 7.2, which treats such absence as resignation unless proven excusable. The employees had been warned that their actions constituted an unlawful secondary boycott, were offered a separate gate to return to work, and rejected assignments even after the picket line ended. They petitioned for a writ of mandate to overturn the terminations and restore seniority rights, but the trial court denied the petition, and the appellate court reviewed the denial based on the facts that the absences were not excused and the rule was properly applied. The core reasoning centered on the employees' awareness of the rule, the lack of any labor dispute with their own employer, and the distinction from protected primary strikes.

labor & employmentprocedure

The case concerned a 14-year-old minor, Donnie, who was the subject of a juvenile court petition under Welfare and Institutions Code section 602 alleging murder and assault with a deadly weapon after two young children in his temporary care were found injured, one fatally. Following an initial adjudication hearing before a referee and a rehearing before the juvenile court judge, the court dismissed the section 602 allegations, added a new allegation under section 601 that the minor was in danger of leading an idle, dissolute, lewd, or immoral life, sustained that allegation based on the incidents, declared the minor a ward of the court, and ordered suitable placement. The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal from the placement order as not separately appealable and reversed the judgment declaring the minor a ward under section 601.

criminal lawprocedurefamily law

In People v. Smith, defendant Ernest Smith was charged with the murder of Louis Michael Turpin under Penal Code section 187 and, after a bench trial, was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to state prison. The main issue on appeal was whether the trial court erred by allowing a key prosecution witness's preliminary hearing testimony to be read into the record at trial, allegedly violating the defendant's Sixth Amendment right to confrontation because the prosecution failed to show the witness was unavailable. The court examined the prosecution's efforts, including multiple police investigations in Pasadena and San Francisco, contacts with parole officers and the Youth Authority, and inquiries in Texas, and concluded these constituted a good-faith effort to secure the witness's presence under Barber v. Page and related U.S. Supreme Court precedents. It therefore held that admission of the former testimony was proper and affirmed the judgment.

criminal lawprocedure

The case involved the County of Los Angeles suing Hartford Accident & Indemnity Company to recover unpaid property taxes on an apartment building planned for conversion to condominiums, based on a surety bond required by Business and Professions Code section 11601 as a condition for recording the final tract map. The trial court granted summary judgment for the county, but Hartford appealed on the ground that liability on the bond required the actual sale of at least one condominium unit. The court noted that the bond's statutory purpose is to protect individual lots or units from a blanket tax lien for the year the map is recorded. It reasoned that, unlike a standard subdivision where recording automatically creates separate assessable lots, a condominium project under Civil Code sections 783 and 1350 does not create separate units until at least one is sold, so the bond's protective purpose never arose and the surety had no liability.

propertytaxesbusiness & regulatory

The case involved appellants Jake Orlando Ortega and Floyd Dan Rodriguez, who were jointly tried and convicted by a jury of first-degree robbery under Penal Code section 211, with findings that they were armed with deadly weapons during the offense. The prosecution presented evidence of the June 1968 robbery of a delicatessen, including victim identification of the defendants and recovered items like marked coins and a wallet matching the victim's, along with weapons found in their vehicle the next day. The defendants raised defenses of alibi and denial, challenged the denial of their severance motions, and contested certain jury instructions and evidentiary rulings on appeal from their convictions and sentences. The court affirmed the judgments, finding sufficient evidence supported the identifications and verdicts, the joint trial was proper, and the jury instructions and cross-examination were not prejudicial error.

criminal law

The case involved appellant Charles Gene Mack, who was convicted of grand theft and second-degree burglary after waiving a jury trial; the convictions stemmed from a break-in at a trucking business and a nearby service station where stolen items including a battery charger and hydraulic motors were found in his car along with a matching screwdriver. The trial court denied his motion for a new trial and committed him to the Youth Authority on both counts to run concurrently. On appeal, Mack challenged the sufficiency of the evidence and argued that the dual commitment violated Penal Code section 654's prohibition on multiple punishments. The court affirmed the judgment, holding that circumstantial evidence such as the items in the vehicle, paint matching, and pry mark analysis supported the convictions despite contrary testimony from Mack, his wife, and his cousin. It further ruled that Youth Authority commitments are rehabilitative rather than punitive, so they do not trigger section 654, though the issue could be raised later if the Authority returned Mack to court.

criminal lawprocedure