Justia California Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

Paul retained attorney Patton to draft an amendment to his revocable living trust. Paul signed the “Trust Amendment,” which, as drafted by Patton, named his wife, Helen, and his children, Stephen, David, Alan, and Nancy, as beneficiaries. Stephen and David also are the successor trustees. Following Paul’s death, they petitioned the probate court to modify the Trust Amendment, alleging it failed to conform to Paul’s intentions by erroneously granting Helen an interest in brokerage accounts and personal and real property. In that probate court action, Patton admitted the Trust Amendment did not reflect Paul’s intention that his brokerage accounts and personal and real property be divided among his children. Stephen and David settled the probate court action with Helen. The children filed the legal malpractice action, alleging that Patton failed to exercise reasonable care in performing legal services by failing to draft the Trust Amendment in a manner consistent with the decedent’s intentions. The trial court dismissed. The court of appeal reversed. The trial court erred in concluding as a matter of law that the children could not establish Patton owed them a duty as beneficiaries; they should be permitted to amend their complaint to allege such a duty. View "Paul v. Patton" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs were represented by defendant attorneys in an action against State Farm arising out of the 1994 Northridge earthquake. Court-appointed retired judges presided over a 1997 aggregate settlement. In 2012, one of the plaintiffs conducted a random sampling of other plaintiffs’ awards in the action, which, they claimed, revealed that the defendants had not properly disbursed or accounted for the settlement funds and had concealed this conduct from plaintiffs. Plaintiffs sought damages for failure to obtain their informed consent to an aggregate settlement and misappropriation of and failure to account for the settlement funds. The trial court dismissed, finding the claims based on speculation and barred by the statute of limitations. The court of appeal affirmed, rejecting arguments that the statute of limitations had not run under Probate Code section 16460 because they had no notice of wrongdoing and that actions for violations of Business and Professions Code section 6091 in failing to provide an accounting are not barred because their action was filed within one year of failure to comply with the statute. Where there are facts sufficient to put one on inquiry notice, the fraud statute of limitations starts running even when the defendant is a fiduciary. View "Britton v. Girardi" on Justia Law

Utrecht represented Loanvest in a lawsuit arising out of a loan that was secured by an interest in Oakland property. Utrecht successfully opposed Madow’s motion for a preliminary injunction that would have prevented Loanvest from paying out of the proceeds of the property’s sale. In 2013, Madow became manager of Loanvest, which then sued Utrecht, claiming breach of the duty of loyalty and “looting” Loanvest to pay other obligations. The trial court dismissed under the anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) statute (Code Civ. Proc., 425.16), finding that the claim was based on an act in furtherance of the right of petition and that Loanvest failed to make a prima facie showing of its ability to prevail in the action. The court of appeal reversed. Loanvest is not a third party allegedly harmed by Utrecht’s representation of another client, but Utrecht’s former client that allegedly was harmed as the result of his “egregiously breaching the duty of loyalty.” That the complaint refers to another as Utrecht’s “true client” and Loanvest as his “purported client” does not alter that admitted fact. A lawsuit that concerns a breach of duty does not depend on the exercise of a constitutional right. View "Loanvest I, LLC v. Utrecht" on Justia Law

Defendant was charged with lewd and lascivious conduct with a child after his girlfriend’s daughter reported molestation. The prosecutor told the defender (Hinman) that the People would accept a settlement offer for a prison term of eight years. Defendant was unwilling to settle, but Hinman continued to attempt to persuade defendant. The prosecutor stated that he was considering refiling the charges to allege penetrative acts, which carried a possible life sentence and provided Hinman with a translation of defendant’s police interrogation, which had been conducted in Spanish. The translation contained additional lines, fabricated by the prosecution: “[DEFENDANT]: I know. I’m just glad she’s not pregnant like her mother.” Hinman informed defendant it included an admission of penetration. Defendant denied making the incriminating statements. Hinman sought to uncover why the incriminating lines were not present in the translation prepared by his office. Days later, Hinman requested “the exact CD reviewed by [the People’s] transcriber/interpreter,” but got no response. Later that day, the proscutor admitted to falsifying the transcript. The trial court dismissed, finding the conduct “egregious, outrageous, and … shocked the conscience.” The court of appeal affirmed, finding that defendant’s constitutional right to counsel was prejudiced by the prosecutor’s misconduct. View "People v. Velasco-Palacios" on Justia Law

Amis alleged that his former attorneys committed malpractice by “caus[ing]” him to execute a settlement agreement that converted his company’s corporate obligations into Amis’s personal obligations without advising Amis that he had little to no risk of personal liability in the underlying litigation. All advice he received from the attorneys regarding the settlement agreement was given during mediation. The attorneys argued that Amis could not obtain evidence to support his claims, and that the law firm could not produce evidence to defend itself, because the disclosure of such evidence was barred by the mediation confidentiality statutes, Evidence Code section 1115. The trial court agreed on both counts and entered summary judgment for the firm. The court of appeal affirmed. The California Supreme Court has broadly applied the mediation confidentiality statutes and all but categorically prohibited judicially crafted exceptions, even in situations where justice seems to call for a different result. View "Amis v. Greenberg Traurig, LLP" on Justia Law

Petitioners sought the disqualification of the law firm of AlvaradoSmith, which: (1) previously represented another law firm in an attorney fee dispute; and (2) in this case, represented an expert seeking consulting fees arising out of the same underlying litigation as the attorney fee dispute. The Court of Appeal issued a stay order and order to show cause, and later concluded that due to AlvaradoSmith's wide-ranging access to privileged information in the first representation and the substantial relationship between the two matters required the firm to be disqualified. View "Acacia Patent Acquisition v. Super. Ct." on Justia Law

Guam attorney Lujan was sued in two lawsuits in Hawaii, followed by another in California, which could have cost him millions of dollars, loss of reputation, and possibly his license to practice law. He hired a law firm with offices in San Francisco and Guam to represent him, which included filing two more proceedings. The representation generated significant billings about which Lujan complained, refusing to pay a large balance. The firm withdrew from the representation, and sued. A jury returned a verdict for the firm of $945,947.90 “together with its disbursements and costs, including expert witness fees, in the amount of $_____, prevailing party attorneys’ fees as allowed by contract in the amount of $_____, and pre-judgment interest as allowed by contract in the amount of $_____.” The court later awarded $331,545.51 in prejudgment interest. The California Court of Appeal affirmed. The firm filed a memorandum of costs and a motion for attorney fees based on the engagement letter Lujan had signed. Following thousands of pages of briefing and oral argument, the trial court forwarded $1,532,674 in attorney fees, and $123,227 in expert witness fees, based on a Code of Civil Procedure section 998 offer. The court of appeal affirmed. View "Calvo, Fisher & Jacob v. Lujan" on Justia Law

Anten and the Rubins jointly retained Gelfand and Kirios of the Weintraub law firm to advise and represent them on a matter of common interest: incorrect advice given by their prior tax attorneys. Anten filed a malpractice action against those lawyers concerning that representation. In response to discovery propounded by Anten, the lawyers objected that Anten’s discovery sought communications between the lawyers and the Rubins that were protected by the attorney-client privilege, which the Rubins expressly declined to waive. The superior court denied a motion to compel further responses, on the basis of the attorney-client privilege objection. The court of appeal granted Anten writ relief. In a lawsuit between the attorney and one or more of the attorney’s joint clients, based on an alleged breach of a duty arising from the attorney-client relationship, relevant communications between the attorney and any of the joint clients, made in the course of the attorney-joint-client relationship, are not privileged. View "Anten v. Super. Court" on Justia Law

Almanza was charged with nonforcible lewd or lascivious act on a child under age 14 (Pen. Code, 288(a)), forcible sodomy (286(c)(2)), and forcible lewd or lascivious act on a child under age 14 (288(b)(1)) with respect to his girlfriend’s daughter. At one point the victim stated that she had lied about the molestations because she was angry about having been disciplined. The court was aware, before trial, that the prosecutor threatened to prosecute the defense investigator and insinuated that defense counsel could also be prosecuted, for hiring and revealing the victim’s name to an investigator who was not licensed. After a bench trial, Almanza was found guilty of the lewd-act counts but not guilty of the sodomy counts and was sentenced to 16 years in prison. The court of appeal affirmed, despite finding that the prosecutor precipitated a serious conflict of interest between defendant and defense counsel, that “the trial court did little to try to remedy and that defense counsel could have done more to address.” The court noted the evidence of guilt and cited the California Supreme Court’s statement that prejudice will be presumed only when counsel is representing multiple defendants concurrently and a conflict of interest arises from that circumstance. View "People v. Almanza" on Justia Law

The Fergusons offered to sell their attorney, Yaspan, an interest in a London flat they owned. At Yaspan’s suggestion, the Fergusons hired independent counsel and the parties exchanged five drafts before signing a written agreement in 1995. This agreement enabled the Fergusons to recover nearly all of their original purchase price for the flat and still own half of it. Both the Fergusons and the Yaspans wanted to be partners with each other and not each others’ children, so they agreed that whichever couple outlived the other would have the right to buy out the deceased couple’s interest before that interest could pass to anyone else. The Fergusons were then 70 and 68 years old; the Yaspans were 49 and 47. The trial court concluded that Mrs. Ferguson’s 2011 petition to set aside the agreement as a product of Yaspan’s undue influence was untimely and without merit. The court of appeal affirmed, rejecting arguments that the trial court erred by looking at the fairness of the Agreement as a whole rather than focusing on terms Ferguson identified as unfair, and giving insufficient weight to the statistical likelihood that the buyout provision would favor the Yaspans. View "Ferguson v. Yaspan" on Justia Law