The First District holds that a divorce settlement awarding one spouse the marital home ‘and all debts thereon’ does not implicitly require removing the other spouse from the mortgage, reinforcing that such obligations must be explicitly stated.
The First District affirmed a $24.7 million verdict against a foster family agency, holding that FFAs have a duty to protect foster children from abuse they knew or should have known about, but rejecting both an unlimited protective duty and one requiring actual knowledge.
California’s First District Court of Appeal reversed a juvenile court’s dismissal of malnutrition-based dependency counts, finding uncontradicted evidence compelled jurisdiction where parents failed to acknowledge or plan for a toddler’s severe nutritional deficiencies.
First District holds that a juvenile court may consider a victim impact statement at a six-month baseline review hearing if it limits its consideration to material relevant to the juvenile’s rehabilitation.
First District extends its warning about AI-generated fake citations to self-represented litigants and reverses a child support order for failing to include the obligor’s bonus and restricted stock unit income.
First District holds that a default dissolution judgment must be vacated under Code of Civil Procedure section 580 when the petition listed assets only as ‘to be determined’ and the responding spouse lacked notice of the actual property division being sought.
First District reverses a juvenile court order transferring a 16-year-old murder defendant to adult court because the court did not apply the heightened amenability standards required by AB 2361 and SB 545.
First District affirms juvenile court jurisdiction but reverses removal of an infant from a mother with serious mental illness because the agency did not show reasonable efforts to prevent removal.