California Legal Brief

The Rule of In re Marriage of Nishida and Kamoda is that a family law fraud action filed timely in civil court and transferred to family law court may proceed on the merits rather than being dismissed for jurisdictional reasons, under circumstances where the plaintiff filed a civil complaint within the one-year discovery period of Family Code section 2122(a) and the case was properly transferred between departments of the same superior court.

The Rule of In re Marriage of Jenkins is that a default judgment in a family law case must be set aside when it exceeds the relief requested in the petition and the defaulting party lacked adequate notice of the specific assets to be divided, under circumstances where the petition contained only "TBD" placeholders for property division and the prove-up hearing was conducted based on informal, off-the-record communications without proper notice to the defaulting spouse.

The Rule of O'Leary v. Jones is that a party who obtains dismissal of a petition to confirm arbitration award on personal jurisdiction grounds is not a prevailing party under Civil Code section 1717 where the dismissal does not finally resolve the enforceability of the arbitration award and leaves the underlying contract dispute unresolved, under circumstances where the court expressly declines to rule on vacation of the award and the substantive claims may be pursued in another forum.

The Rule of Jacobs v. Papez is that an attorney may bring a single declaratory relief action against both the clients and a competing attorney lien claimant to enforce an attorney lien claim on settlement or judgment proceeds, under circumstances where the attorney obtained a recovery for clients and seeks to resolve competing lien claims without having to wait for other attorneys to first establish their liens in separate actions.

The Rule of Fuentes v. Empire Nissan, Inc. is that a contract's format and illegibility generally do not support substantive unconscionability, but courts must closely scrutinize difficult-to-read contracts for unfair or one-sided terms when high procedural unconscionability exists, under circumstances where an employment arbitration agreement is presented in nearly illegible tiny print with minimal time for review.

The Rule of Conservatorship of B.K. is that an LPS Act conservatee may waive their jury trial right through counsel without a personal on-the-record advisement when the conservatee acknowledges awareness of the right and confirms the waiver choice, under circumstances where counsel has consulted with the conservatee, there is no suggestion counsel lacks authority or disregards the client's wishes, and the conservatee participates in the proceedings without objection.

The Rule of Gerard v. Cuevas is that a trial court cannot retroactively shorten a notice period under Code of Civil Procedure section 1987 to 91 minutes and then impose a terminating sanction when the defendant fails to appear, under circumstances where the original notice was untimely served and the court had not previously ordered shortened time.

The Rule of Albarghouti is that the California False Claims Act creates a 60-day default sealing period, after which the seal lifts automatically absent the government's request for an extension, under circumstances where a qui tam plaintiff files the complaint in camera, serves the Attorney General by certified mail, and the government neither requests a seal extension nor provides notice of its intervention decision within 60 days.

The Rule of Zand v. Sukumar is that an appellant cannot use the doctrine of voidness to collaterally attack a final appellate judgment by claiming trial court orders were void, when the challenged orders rest on errors that are merely in excess of jurisdiction rather than fundamental jurisdictional defects, under circumstances where the appellant has already appealed the underlying orders and lost.

The Rule of Apartment Association of Los Angeles County, Inc. v. City of Los Angeles is that a municipal ordinance creating a monetary threshold that must be satisfied before a cause of action for unlawful detainer accrues is a permissible substantive regulation of the grounds for eviction rather than an impermissible procedural limitation on the unlawful detainer statutes, under circumstances where the ordinance does not extend the unlawful detainer timeline, does not prohibit landlords from proceeding under the state statutory timeline, and does not require landlords to take affirmative action before commencing unlawful detainer proceedings.