Consumer Attorneys Sue Supreme Court over Case Publication Rules
Newport Beach personal injury firm Bisnar | Chase announced on its California Injury Blog that it has filed suit against the California Supreme Court and a district of the Court of Appeal. While not...
View ArticleFollow the Rules – A Lesson from the Ninth
Today’s decision in Sekiya v. Gates, case no. 06-15887 (9th Cir. November 29, 2007) is a reminder that the dismissal sanction is lurking out there for any parties to an appeal that fail to follow the...
View ArticleUsing the Court of Appeals as a Crystal Ball
“Don’t do it” is the friendly advice from the Ninth in Global Horizons, Inc. v. U. S. Dept. of Labor, case no. 07-15116 (9th Cir. Dec. 13, 2007). At the end of its opinion affirming the denial of a...
View ArticleChutzpah on Appeal
“Chutzpah” is about the most polite word I could come up with for the appellant’s audacity in United States v. Moreland, case no. 05-30541 (9th Cir., Dec. 13, 2007). Moreland apparently swindled...
View ArticleThere’s No “E” Before “Mails” When it Comes to Triggering the Deadline to Appeal
Modern communication and the California Rules of Court collide in Citizens for Civic Accountability v. Town of Danville, case no. A121899 (1st Dist. Oct. 27, 2008), and the winner is . . . the rules!...
View ArticleThe Mindset of Appellate Judges
Here is a well-stated look into the minds of appellate judges, from a 2-year old column by Howard Bashman: One essential trait that an appellate lawyer must possess is the ability to think about legal...
View ArticleJudgment assignees better be careful
Last month’s decision in Cal-Western Business Services, Inc. v. Corning Capital Group, case no. B241714 (2d Dist., November 6, 2013) makes for some interesting reading and a cautionary tale for those...
View ArticleA novelist/academic’s views on persuasive writing
A lawyer in one of my LinkedIn groups alerted the group to an interesting article that gives a non-lawyer’s perspective on persuasive writing. Introducing the article, St. Louis attorney Daniel Schramm...
View ArticleWhy Some Lawyers and Their Clients are Reluctant to Engage Appellate Counsel,...
For those of you wondering, yes, this is a resumption of a series of posts I wrote years ago on reluctance to engage appellate counsel. (You can read the whole series here.) I was reviewing that series...
View ArticleEmotional interest falls short of legal standing to appeal dependency ruling
As a general rule, only a person “aggrieved” by a judgment has standing to appeal from it. Is a mother without reunification services “aggrieved” by a judgment granting her 18-year-old child’s request...
View ArticleKnow your route of review . . . and when to invoke it
If you don’t know your route of review and when to invoke it, you end up like the plaintiff in Tejon Real Estate, LLC v. City of Los Angeles, B247255 (2d Dist. January 23, 2014). In fact, not only did...
View ArticleMake the argument yours, not someone else’s
You represent an appellant in a state court action who claims the action is precluded by a prior federal court action because the plaintiff split his cause of action between the two lawsuits. Your...
View ArticleHow to write for the “iPad judge”
No brief would look good on my pathetic iPad, which has some of the pieces of its broken screen held on with tape! Are a lot of appellate judges/justices reading briefs on iPads these days? The...
View ArticleThe law, the story, and the policy
Almost sounds like the beginning of a joke, doesn’t it? (A law, a story, and a policy walk into a bar . . . ) But I’m not presenting these things as a joke. According to San Diego antitrust attorney...
View ArticleJustice Kennard retiring April 5
Justice Joyce Kennard has announced her retirement from the California Supreme Court effective April 5, on which she will mark the 25th anniversary of her appointment. The article at the San Francisco...
View ArticleThe “outsider’s perspective” theory illustrated in the extreme
I’ve mentioned before that one of the valuable things an appellate lawyer can bring to your case is the “outsider’s perspective” — the ability to give the case an objective look that trial counsel is...
View ArticleThoughts on publication of opinions imposing appellate sanctions for...
This recent Southern California Appellate News post by Ben Shatz led me to a case that got me thinking further about the utility of publishing opinions imposing appellate sanctions. More than six years...
View ArticleCollateral estoppel is no day at the beach (a lesson in appealing in a timely...
Occasionally, a party will try to get around the finality of a decision by making a “collateral attack” on its validity in a separate proceeding. That can work if you are attacking the jurisdiction of...
View ArticleThe consequences of reluctant unanimity in appellate decisions
Through LinkedIn, I ran across an interesting appellate blog, Briefly Writing. In a post yesterday, blogger Michael Skotnicki shared his alarm at learning from the Eleventh Circuit’s chief judge that...
View ArticleWhat happens when standards of review collide?
Sometimes . . . nothing. As in Pielstick v. MidFirst Bank, case no. B247106 (2d Dist. Mar 26, 2014), in which the court was asked to reverse the trial court’s refusal to allow a plaintiff to...
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