Los Angeles Appellate Division reverses an unlawful-detainer default judgment and terminating sanction, holding the trial court abused its discretion by retroactively shortening Code of Civil Procedure section 1987’s 10-day notice period to 91 minutes and then striking the tenant’s answe
First District affirms LPS conservatorship renewal and involuntary medication order for a 42-year-old man with undifferentiated schizophrenia, finding substantial evidence supports continued grave disability and incompetence to refuse antipsychotic medication.
Fourth District reverses summary judgment for Wal-Mart, holding California’s Investigative Consumer Reporting Agencies Act allows employees to recover the $10,000 statutory damages award for ICRAA disclosure violations without proving any concrete injury such as an adverse employment decision.
Fourth District reverses a defense judgment in a Song-Beverly action against Kia, holding the trial court abused its discretion by accepting Kia’s false verified discovery responses about engine-defect records and failing to impose terminating sanctions when the falsity was revealed.
Santa Clara Appellate Division reverses a debt-buyer’s trial judgment, holding the trial court erred in admitting testimony from an undisclosed witness and account records that were not properly authenticated under the business-records hearsay exception.
The California Supreme Court clarifies that an unreadably small or blurry contract goes to procedural unconscionability, not substantive unconscionability — but illegibility triggers heightened scrutiny of the underlying terms for unfairness.
First District holds a program-level Environmental Impact Report for a local government’s general plan update need not include site-specific environmental analysis of housing-element inventory sites where no actual housing project has been proposed.
First District holds the automatic bankruptcy stay does not bar appellate proceedings the debtor itself brought, and affirms a defense verdict and attorney-fee award in a $1.5 million loan-related contract and fraud dispute.
Second District (on rehearing) holds Santa Barbara’s modernized video users’ tax applies to internet video streaming services like Hulu, Disney+, and ESPN+, and rejects challenges under the federal Internet Tax Freedom Act, the First Amendment, and California Constitution Article XIII C.
Third District affirms summary judgment for Zipcar in a serious personal-injury case, holding that a remote, app-based rental car company has no duty to inquire whether a member appears impaired at the time of rental.