OPINION WERDEGAR, J. — Plaintiff, who fractured her wrist on a bumper car ride at an amusement park, sued the park owner for negligence in not configuring or operating the bumper car ride so as to prevent her injury. The superior court granted summary judgment for defendant on the basis of the primary assumption of risk doctrine, under which participants in and operators of certain activities have no duty of ordinary care to protect other participants from risks inherent in the activity. (...
OPINION KENNARD, J. — A supermarket owner sought a court injunction to prevent a labor union from picketing on the privately owned walkway in front of the only customer entrance to its store. In response, the union argued that two statutory provisions — Code of Civil Procedure section 527.3 (the Moscone Act) and Labor Code section 1138.1 (section 1138.1) — prohibited issuance of an injunction under these circumstances. The trial court denied relief, ruling that the supermarket owner had...
OPINION CHIN, J. — A revocable trust is a trust that the person who creates it, generally called the settlor, 1 can revoke during the person's lifetime. The beneficiaries' interest in the trust is contingent only, and the settlor can eliminate that interest at any time. When the trustee of a revocable trust is someone other than the settlor, that trustee owes a fiduciary duty to the settlor, not to the beneficiaries, as long as the settlor is alive. During that time, the trustee needs to...
OPINION WERDEGAR, J. — (1) Sued under state and federal law for disability access discrimination, defendant Song Koo Lee prevailed and sought attorney fees. The trial court concluded fees for a prevailing defendant under Civil Code section 55 were mandatory and awarded $118,458, and the Court of Appeal affirmed. 1 We consider two principal challenges to the award: whether the trial court erred in determining that section 55 fees are mandatory, and whether an award of mandatory fees is...
OPINION CANTIL-SAKAUYE, C. J. — In July 1990, defendant Paul Sodoa Watkins shot and killed Raymond Shield. A jury convicted defendant of the first degree murder of Shield (Pen. Code, 187, subd. (a)), and found true the special circumstance allegation that defendant did so while in the commission of an attempted robbery. (Pen. Code, 190.2, subd. (a)(17)(A).) 1 The jury further found defendant guilty of second degree attempted robbery of Shield ( 211, 213, subd. (a)(2)), and it found...
OPINION CORRIGAN, J. — Government Code 1 section 915, subdivision (a) (section 915(a)), establishes the manner of delivery of a claim against the government. It requires that a claim be presented to a local public entity by "[d]elivering it to the clerk, secretary or auditor," or by mailing it to one of these officials "or to the governing body." Section 915, subdivision (e) (section 915(e)), further provides that a misdirected claim "shall be deemed to have been presented in compliance"...
OPINION WERDEGAR, J. — We hold here that the requirements of the California Coastal Act of 1976 (Pub. Resources Code, 30000 et seq.; hereafter Coastal Act) and the Mello Act (Gov. Code, 65590, 65590.1) apply to a proposed conversion, within California's coastal zone, of a mobilehome park from tenant occupancy to resident ownership. In so holding, we reject the argument that such a conversion is not a "development" for purposes of the Coastal Act, and further reject the argument that...
OPINION CHIN, J. — A small dental implant company that had net profits of $101,000 in 1998 has sued a university for breach of a contract for the university to clinically test a new implant the company had patented. The company seeks damages for lost profits beginning in 1998, ranging from $200 million to over $1 billion. It claims that, but for the university's breach of the contract, the company would have become a worldwide leader in the dental implant industry and made many millions of...
OPINION CORRIGAN, J. — Here we are called upon to apply two related but distinct concepts: (1) the rule prohibiting multiple convictions based on greater and necessarily included offenses, and (2) Penal Code section 654's prohibition against multiple punishments when "[a]n act ... is punishable in different ways by different provisions of law ...." 1 Defendant Maurice D. Sanders was convicted on two counts of possessing a firearm after conviction of a felony (former 12021, subd. (a)(1);...
OPINION CANTIL-SAKAUYE, C. J. — By statute, counties are responsible for the administration of local property taxes by assessing and collecting them and then disbursing the revenue to the various cities, special districts, schools, and other entities within the county. Some of the revenue, however, must be allocated to each county's "Educational Revenue Augmentation Fund" (sometimes referred to as ERAF) — a state-created fund that reallocates portions of local property tax revenue to...
OPINION KENNARD, J. — The Sixth Amendment of the United States Constitution grants a criminal defendant the right to confront adverse witnesses. That right is at issue in a trio of cases before us. (The two companion cases are People v. Dungo (2012) 55 Cal.4th 608 , and People v. Rutterschmidt (2012) 55 Cal.4th 650 .) Each involves the constitutionality of a prosecution expert's testimony about certain information in a report prepared by someone who did not testify at trial. Here,...
OPINION KENNARD, J. — This is the third of three cases before us involving the federal Constitution's right to confront adverse witnesses. (U.S. Const., 6th Amend.) The two companion cases are People v. Lopez (2012) 55 Cal.4th 569 , and People v. Dungo (2012) 55 Cal.4th 608 . Here, defendant Helen Golay and codefendant Olga Rutterschmidt 1 were in their mid-70's when they were charged with murdering two men — one in 1999, the other in 2005 — by running over each of them with a car....
OPINION WERDEGAR, J. — We issued an order to show cause in this case to address a problem that, over time, has threatened to undermine the efficacy of the system for adjudicating petitions for collateral relief in cases involving the death penalty. The cases of those individuals sentenced to suffer the ultimate penalty in this state are automatically appealed directly to this court, bypassing the intermediate Court of Appeal. (Cal. Const., art. VI, 11, subd. (a); Pen. Code, 1239, subd. (b)...
OPINION KENNARD, J. — On petitioner's automatic appeal in this death penalty case, we affirmed the judgment. Thereafter, petitioner filed a habeas corpus petition. We ordered an evidentiary hearing on petitioner's claim that the prosecution had failed to disclose evidence that would have supported a case in mitigation at the penalty phase that petitioner committed the two murders because of a Colombian drug cartel's death threats against him and his family. After hearing the testimony of...
OPINION KENNARD, J. — Six days after his birth, plaintiff suffered irreversible brain damage. Through his mother as guardian ad litem, he sued his pediatrician and the hospital in which he was born. Before trial, plaintiff and the pediatrician agreed to a settlement of $1 million, the limit of the pediatrician's malpractice insurance policy. At a jury trial, plaintiff was awarded both economic and noneconomic damages. The jury found that the pediatrician was 55 percent at fault, the hospital...
OPINION BAXTER, J. — An owners association filed the instant construction defect action against a condominium developer, seeking recovery for damage to its property and damage to the separate interests of the condominium owners who compose its membership. In response, the developer filed a motion to compel arbitration, based on a clause in the recorded declaration of covenants, conditions, and restrictions providing that the association and the individual owners agree to resolve any...
OPINION CHIN, J. — This case considers complex questions of insurance policy coverage interpretation in connection with a federal court-ordered cleanup of the state's Stringfellow Acid Pits wastesite. We initially address the "`continuous injury' trigger of coverage," as that principle was explained in Montrose Chemical Corp. v. Admiral Ins. Co. (1995) 10 Cal.4th 645 , 655 [ 42 Cal.Rptr.2d 324 , 913 P.2d 878] ( Montrose ) and the "all sums" rule adopted in Aerojet-General Corp. v....
OPINION CORRIGAN, J. — Defendant Ivan Joe Gonzales was convicted of murdering Genny Rojas. 1 The jury found as a special circumstance that the murder was intentional and involved the infliction of torture. 2 However, it was unable to reach a penalty verdict. Another jury was impaneled, and the second penalty phase trial resulted in a death verdict. 3 I. FACTS A. Guilt Phase 1. Prosecution Genny Rojas was four years old when she died in July 1995. She and her siblings had been...
OPINION LIU, J. — A jury convicted defendant Eric Christopher Houston of the first degree murders of Robert Brens, Judy Davis, Beamon Hill, and Jason White (Pen. Code, 187, subd. (a), 189; further undesignated statutory references are to the Penal Code), and found true a multiple-murder special-circumstance allegation ( 190.2, subd. (a)(3)). The jury also convicted defendant of the attempted murders of Wayne Boggess, Patricia Collazo, Danita Gipson, Donald Graham, Thomas Hinojosai, John...
OPINION BAXTER, J. — An amended information charged defendant Richard Christopher Tully with the 1986 murder of Shirley Olsson (Pen. Code, 187) and assault with intent to commit rape ( id., 1203.065, subd. (b)). 1 The information also alleged a special circumstance that the murder was committed in the commission of a burglary and, as to both counts, that defendant used a dangerous and deadly weapon, to wit: a knife. ( 190.2, former subd. (a)(17)(vii), 12022, subd. (b).) 2 Shirley...
