The court dismissed a putative class action filed under the Class Action Fairness Act on its own initiative, ruling that minimal diversity was missing because both the named plaintiff and the defendant were California citizens, and the complaint’s bare conclusion that more than $5 million was
After the defendant’s counsel ultimately confirmed that the company had received the complaint on August 1, 2025, the court ruled the September 25, 2025 notice of removal was filed weeks past the 30-day deadline and remanded the case to state court, declining to award sanctions because there w
After defendants ignored a court order to pay an $11,400 attorney-fee award, the magistrate judge certified facts to the district judge supporting civil contempt and recommended a coercive per-diem fine, but recommended denying the plaintiff’s request for additional fees on the contempt motion
In a personal-injury suit by a consumer who lacerated her hand when a Mumm Napa Valley sparkling wine bottle exploded after she used a corkscrew to remove a stuck cork, the court granted summary judgment on the design-defect and negligent-storage claims but allowed the failure-to-warn claims to proc
The court conditionally certified a federal Fair Labor Standards Act collective action by City of San Diego firefighters who claim the City miscalculated their overtime by leaving a $500 paramedic-certification bonus out of their regular rate of pay, and approved a joint notification plan with adjus
The court issued a limited stay of a federal misclassification class action against Assurance IQ and Prudential pending a preliminary settlement approval ruling in an earlier-filed and substantially similar state-court class action whose proposed class includes the federal plaintiff.
After previously certifying a class of California bus driver/operator employees of Transdev for wage-and-hour claims, the court reversed course and decertified the class in light of multiple overlapping earlier-filed state-court class actions, then stayed the case to allow those proceedings to advan
The court dismissed without leave to amend a §1983 suit against a senior deputy clerk of the California Court of Appeal who allegedly refused filings, yelled, and issued unauthorized orders, ruling that quasi-judicial immunity bars damages claims and that §1983 itself bars injunctive relief against
In an APA challenge to ICE’s withdrawal of the school’s certification to enroll foreign students, the magistrate judge refused to compel the agency to add documents to the administrative record or to allow a deposition of the deciding official, ruling that the school’s claims of mi
After granting the plaintiff’s request to proceed without paying the filing fee, the court dismissed her five-sentence complaint alleging RICO and due-process violations against a single defendant for failure to state a plausible claim and noted serious doubts about whether venue was proper in
The court denied remand in a Song-Beverly Act/Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act lemon-law case against General Motors over a 2018 GMC Yukon, ruling that GM’s removal was timely because the federal MMWA claim alone did not affirmatively show the amount in controversy and pre-litigation repair records
On the second screening of an 80-year-old veteran’s pro se complaint against VA officials and his primary-care doctor, the court dismissed his amended due-process, civil-rights conspiracy, federal elder-abuse, and Older Americans Act claims with prejudice and granted limited leave to amend onl
In a putative class action alleging that SD Bullion’s ‘The Lowest Price. Period.’ advertising for precious-metal coins was false because competitors charged less, the court trimmed several theories at the motion-to-dismiss stage but allowed the consumer’s core false-advertisi
The court denied a detainee plaintiff’s motion to proceed without paying the filing fee under the Prison Litigation Reform Act’s three-strikes rule and dismissed the complaint, citing more than 600 prior civil filings nationwide and dozens of prior dismissals for frivolousness or failure
The court dismissed financial-elder-abuse and Electronic Funds Transfer Act claims by a Social Security beneficiary against Comerica Bank and the operator of the Direct Express debit-card program after $6,815 in fraudulent transactions, ruling that the complaint did not allege the bank had actual kn
The court dismissed a pro se tenant’s Fair Housing Act sex-discrimination and § 1985 civil-rights conspiracy claims against the owners and managers of her San Diego apartment building, finding her allegations of gender-based animus conclusory and contradicted by her own pleading.
In a breach-of-contract dispute over a $160,000 fee demand following a cybersecurity vendor’s alleged failure to detect a 2023 data breach at a Georgia orthopedic clinic, the court dismissed the vendor’s counterclaim theories for fraud in the inducement, breach of the implied covenant of
In a federal False Claims Act case alleging that Abbott Laboratories used illegal kickbacks disguised as physician education for its MitraClip heart device, the magistrate judge declined to strike the relator’s late-filed expert report on medical-education standards, finding that even though t
The court dismissed three Monell municipal-liability claims against the City of San Diego based on a 2022 wrongful-arrest incident at Mission Beach, ruling that allegations of unrelated SDPD incidents did not establish a longstanding custom, that the failure-to-train theory required a pattern of sim
The court compelled arbitration of a former CVS employee’s discrimination, harassment, retaliation, and wage claims, ruling that CVS met its burden of authenticating her electronic signature on a 2017 arbitration agreement and that her bare assertion that her supervisor logged in and signed fo
After a hearing, the federal court granted the plaintiffs’ motion to remand a wrongful-death case to state court and ordered the removing defendants to pay attorney’s fees, finding their removal lacked an objectively reasonable basis under the Ninth Circuit’s recent decision in Chi
The court denied a self-represented dentist’s emergency motion to block his landlord from terminating a 21-year tenancy and pursuing state unlawful-detainer proceedings, finding that his § 1983 and ADA claims could not satisfy the most-important Winter factor — likelihood of success on the mer
After a bench trial in a consumer class action against an online skincare seller, the magistrate judge concluded that the seller’s customer-management software vendor was not liable on aiding-and-abetting or conspiracy theories under California’s Consumer Legal Remedies Act because the p
After remand led to an award of $247,681 in past-due Social Security benefits over eight years, the magistrate judge approved $37,920 in attorney’s fees representing 15.3% of the past-due benefits, finding the resulting $1,700-per-hour effective rate reasonable in light of counsel’s risk