Justia California Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

Petitioner State of California (the “State”) is a defendant in an action in which Plaintiffs sought damages for wrongful death and personal injuries suffered in an automobile collision. The superior court ordered the State to produce unredacted accident reports revealing identifying information of the parties and witnesses involved in accidents that occurred in the same area.   The Second Appellate Division denied the State’s petition for a writ of mandate and required the State to reveal the information the Plaintiffs/real parties in interest seek. Petitioner argued the superior court abused its discretion when it ruled that personally identifiable information was not protected under section 20014 of the Vehicle Code. Plaintiffs contended that under section 20012 they have a proper interest in the disclosure of unredacted police reports. The court reasoned that Plaintiffs have shown the accidents are similar in nature and the evidence of the reported accidents “either is itself admissible in evidence or appears reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence.” Thus, this evidence illustrated that Plaintiffs are persons with a “proper interest” in obtaining the unredacted accident reports they seek. View "State of Cal. v. Super. Ct." on Justia Law

While shopping at the Carmel Mountain Ranch location of Costco in San Diego, plaintiff Lilyan Hassaine slipped and fell on a slippery substance that she believed was liquid soap. Claiming serious injuries from the fall, she sued Costco and Club Demonstration Services (CDS), an independent contractor that operated food sample tables within the store. The trial court granted a motion for summary judgment filed by CDS, concluding that the company owed Hassaine no duty of care. In the court’s view, it was dispositive that CDS’s contract with Costco limited its maintenance obligations to a 12-foot perimeter around each sample table, and that Hassaine’s fall occurred outside that boundary. The Court of Appeal reversed, finding the trial court erred in concluding CDS’s contract with Costco delineated the scope of its duty of care to business invitees under general principles of tort law. Businesses have a common law duty of ordinary care to their customers that extends to every area of the store in which they are likely to shop. "While the CDS-Costco agreement may allocate responsibility and liability as a matter of contract between those parties, it does not limit the scope of CDS’s common law duty to customers. ... Breach and causation present triable factual issues here, precluding summary judgment on those grounds." View "Hassaine v. Club Demonstration Services, Inc." on Justia Law

Dual Diagnosis Treatment Center, Inc., d/b/a Sovereign Health of San Clemente, and its owner, Tonmoy Sharma, (collectively Sovereign) appealed the trial court's denial of Sovereign's motion to compel arbitration of claims asserted by Allen and Rose Nelson for themselves and on behalf of their deceased son, Brandon. The Nelsons alleged a cause of action for wrongful death, and on behalf of Brandon, negligence, negligence per se, dependent adult abuse or neglect, negligent misrepresentation, and fraud. According to the complaint, despite concluding that 26-year-old "Brandon requires 24 hour supervision ... at this time" after admitting him to its residential facility following his recent symptoms of psychosis, Sovereign personnel allowed him to go to his room alone, where he hung himself with the drawstring of his sweatpants. The trial court denied Sovereign's motion to compel arbitration because: (1) the court found Sovereign failed to meet its burden to authenticate an electronic signature as Brandon's on Sovereign's treatment center emollment agreement; and (2) even assuming Brandon signed the agreement, it was procedurally and substantively unconscionable, precluding enforcement against Brandon or, derivatively, his parents. Sovereign challenged the trial court's authentication and unconscionability findings. Finding no reversible error, the Court of Appeal affirmed the trial court's judgment. View "Nelson v. Dual Diagnosis Treatment Center" on Justia Law

Relator Gilbert Ellinger brought a qui tam suit on behalf of the People of the State of California against Zurich American Insurance Company (Zurich), ESIS, Inc. (ESIS), and Stephanie Ann Magill, under Insurance Code section 1871.7, a provision of the Insurance Frauds Prevention Act (IFPA). In January 2016, Ellinger injured his back while working, and he immediately informed his supervisor. The following month, Ellinger reported to his employer’s human resources manager that he had sustained a work-related injury and had told his supervisor about it. The human resources manager created a “time line memorandum” summarizing the conversations she had with Ellinger about the injury. She placed the memorandum in Ellinger’s personnel file. Ellinger filed a workers’ compensation claim. Magill worked as a senior claims examiner for ESIS and was the adjuster assigned to investigate Ellinger’s claim. ESIS denied Ellinger’s claim on an unspecified date. Magill later testified that she denied the claim because of a written statement from Ellinger’s supervisor in which the supervisor claimed that Ellinger had not reported the injury to him. When the human resources manager was deposed in November 2016, she produced the time line memorandum, which Ellinger’s counsel in the workers’ compensation action did not know about until then. Nearly eight months after that disclosure, in July 2017, ESIS reversed its denial of the claim and stipulated that Ellinger was injured while working, as he had alleged. Contrary to Magill’s testimony, her email messages showed that the human resources manager had emailed Magill the time line memorandum in March and April 2016, and Magill thanked the manager for sending it. Ellinger alleged that Magill’s concealment of or failure to disclose the time line memorandum violated Penal Code section 550 (b)(1) to (3). On the basis of those alleged violations, Ellinger alleged that defendants were liable under section 1871.7. Against each defendant, Ellington sought a civil penalty and an assessment of no greater than three times the amount of his workers’ compensation claim. The trial court sustained defendants’ demurrers without leave to amend, concluding defendants could not be held liable under section 1871.7 for any failures of Magill in the claims handling or review process. Finding no reversible error in sustaining the demurrers, the Court of Appeal affirmed. View "California ex rel. Ellinger v. Magill" on Justia Law

Plaintiff’s, two patients at an acute psychiatric hospital, obtained judgments against the hospital and its parent company under the Elder Abuse and Dependent Adult Civil Protection Act (“the Elder Abuse Act”).On appeal, Defendants claimed that the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act of 1975 (“MICRA”) applied to Plaintiffs’ claims. Defendants contend that under MICRA, Plaintiffs’ claims are time-barred.The Second Appellate District explained that MICRA is “designed to discourage medical malpractice lawsuits,” whereas the Elder Abuse Act permits “interested persons to engage attorneys to take up the cause of abused elderly persons and dependent adults. The legislative intent is clear that professional negligence and the Elder Abuse Act are separate and distinct. Thus, Plaintiffs’ claims under the Elder Abuse Act were not time-barred.The otherwise court affirmed the lower court’s rulings over Defendants’ objections. However, on Plaintiffs’ appeal, the court ordered a new trial on the issues of respondeat superior and ratification. View "Samantha B. v. Aurora Vista Del Mar" on Justia Law

Quintero sued Weinkauf asserting the torts of stalking, assault, intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED), and domestic violence, alleging that after Quintero ended their romantic relationship, Weinkauf shot arrows and discharged a firearm through the windows of Quintero’s law office under cover of darkness. Quintero had identified him on surveillance video footage. Weinkauf, also an attorney, pled guilty to stalking with an enhancement for the personal use of a dangerous and deadly weapon and conceded that he had shot a crossbow at Quintero’s window once but denied involvement in the other shootings.The jury found in favor of Quintero on the stalking, IIED, and domestic violence claims and in favor of Weinkauf on the assault claim; awarded Quintero $1.3 million in compensatory damages; and found that Weinkauf had engaged in conduct with malice, oppression, or fraud. The court determined Weinkauf’s net worth to be $1.5 million. The jury then awarded Quintero $6,000 in punitive damages. After denying Weinkauf’s post-trial motions, the court awarded Quintero $869,688.79 in attorney fees and $60,565.25 in costs.The court of appeal affirmed, upholding the admission of audio clips from a pretext telephone call between the parties recorded by police and video clips of the surveillance footage from the shootings. The court also rejected challenges to jury instructions, to modification of a protective order, and to the calculations of the awards. View "Quintero v. Weinkauf" on Justia Law

Allied provided security guard services at UCSF medical facilities, hiring security guards and assigning them to particular locations. UCSF was responsible for supervising the security guards. Villegas worked 11:00 p.m.-7:00 a.m., five nights per week. Allied did not require Villegas to use her car for work and did not dictate how she traveled to and from work. She frequently requested extra shifts and often worked six shifts per week. On August 21, Villegas began her fourth straight day of work. When her shift ended the following morning, Villegas’s mother picked Villegas up in Villegas’s vehicle. Villegas dropped her mother off at work, then began driving home. About an hour after finishing her shift, near her home, Villegas fell asleep and drove into oncoming traffic, hitting and severely injuring Feltham, who was riding a motorcycle.In a negligence action, the court of appeal affirmed summary judgment in favor of Allied. Allied was entitled to judgment as a matter of law because Villegas was not acting within the course and scope of her employment at the time of the accident, and the accident was not a foreseeable consequence of Villegas’s employment. View "Feltham v. Universal Protection Service, LP" on Justia Law

The District appealed a judgment entered following a jury's finding that the District's employees were 54 percent responsible for injuries sustained by plaintiff when another student shot him in the stomach with a shotgun. This allocation of fault and the jury's findings as to damages resulted in a judgment holding the District vicariously liable for approximately $2 million.In the published portion of the opinion, the Court of Appeal concluded that the specific acts and omissions identified by plaintiff's expert as below the standard of care for conducting a threat assessment are properly characterized as administrative and not as a mental examination. Thus, those negligent acts and omissions fall outside the scope of Government Code section 855.6 immunity. The court affirmed the judgment. View "Cleveland v. Taft Union High School District" on Justia Law

An employer has an affirmative duty to provide employees with a safe place to work. This duty does not include ensuring that an off-site meeting place for coworkers and business associates like an employee's private residence is safe from third party criminal harm.The Court of Appeal granted the writ petition challenging the trial court's order denying summary judgment and directed the trial court to enter a new and different order granting summary judgment. In this case, a young man suffering from a mental health condition suddenly fired a handgun at family members and guests inside his family home. Plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against Colonial and Defendant Holaday for personal injury damages, alleging negligence claims stemming from their injuries. The court concluded that Colonial owed no duty to protect plaintiffs because Colonial did not control Holaday's home. Furthermore, Colonial owed Plaintiff Dominguez no duty to protect based on the employer-employee relationship. Finally, the Rowland factors counsel against imposing a duty to protect; plaintiffs' claim of intentional infliction of emotion distress against Colonial fails as a matter of law as there are no triable issues (1) Colonial knew or reasonably should have known that the young man posed a danger to plaintiffs—his deadly misconduct was unforeseeable, and (2) Colonial had no ability to control him; and respondeat superior liability is inapplicable here as a matter of law. View "Colonial Van & Storage, Inc. v. Superior Court" on Justia Law

The Court of Appeal reversed the trial court's grant of summary judgment in favor of defendants in an action brought by plaintiff after she was assaulted at a residence for the disabled. The court concluded that the trial court abused its discretion by excluding evidence that suggested that defendants knew that the perpetrator was a problem. The court also concluded that the trial court erred in ruling that the residence owed no duty to plaintiff and similarly erred in concluding that plaintiff could not establish breach and causation. Rather, there was a material factual dispute about whether keeping the perpetrator at the residence breached this duty and caused plaintiff's injuries. Furthermore, there are disputed material facts about the extent to which the individual defendants knew or reasonably should have known about the hazard the perpetrator posed. The court remanded for further proceedings. View "Doe v. Brightstar Residential Inc." on Justia Law