The legal profession has too many lawyers and too few jobs. California has too many lawyers, and too few jobs.
So how does the California State Bar Board of Trustees plan to combat this problem? By creating a new class of professionals who could give legal advice, reports the California Bar Journal.
Except, wait. That compounds the problem, doesn't it?
Song Koo Lee owns and operates the K&D Market in San Francisco's Mission District. He does not own the building, but has operated the market since 1985.
Les Jankey, a wheelchair user, sued Lee for denying him and other similarly-situated disabled persons access to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods and services offered by K&D Market. Jankey claimed that a four-inch step located at the entry of the market was an architectural barrier that prevented him and other wheelchair-bound individuals from wheeling into the store, asserting violations of the federal ADA, the Unruh Civil Rights Act, the Disabled Persons Act, and the Health and Safety Code.
California Government Code 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 "delivering it to the clerk, secretary or auditor," or by mailing it to one of these officials "or to the governing body."
Section 915(e) further provides that a misdirected claim "shall be deemed to have been presented in compliance" if "it is actually received by the clerk, secretary, auditor or board of the local public entity."
Substantial compliance with Section 915 is not enough. Last week, the California Supreme Court held that a claim must satisfy the express delivery provisions language of the statute.
Sino Century Development Limited and Sinomax Polyurethanes (collectively, Sinomax) sued Anatomic Global and David Farley to collect almost $3 million in unpaid invoices. In January 2011, before Farley was dismissed as a defendant in this action, he filed for bankruptcy, which triggered a stay of judicial proceedings against him.
Farley, however, failed to notify Sinomax or the trial court that he had filed for bankruptcy protection as required under California Rule 3.650. On June 28, 2011, the day before trial, Farley’s counsel, Menke & Menke, informed Sinomax that Farley had filed for bankruptcy. Menke proposed that the parties avoid a costly trial because Anatomic Global had no assets.
A California appellate court ruled last week that a surrogate for a party to a pending lawsuit against a public entity may obtain documents under the California Public Records Act (CPRA) relating to the attorney fees charged by litigation counsel for the public entity.
The court concluded that the CPRA "does not allow limitations on access to a public record based upon the purpose for which the record is being requested, if the record is otherwise subject to disclosure." Therefore, the mere fact that an attorney may be seeking public records to assist her colleagues in connection with a pending action was irrelevant.
If you have to serve process on a defendant, and that defendant no longer lives in the U.S., you can’t simply serve process on his mom.
California courts want you to know that there’s a little thing called the Hague Convention, and you have to show that you either complied with it — or it didn’t apply — in order to bring a case in California against a defendant based in a foreign land.
You’re finished with law school, you’ve survived the bar, and you’re officially licensed to practice law in the Golden State.
It’s time to sue some people.
If you’re a neophyte attorney at a law firm, you probably have a mentor who can guide you through the process of turning on your computer, using the electronic filing system, and finding the local coffee shop courthouse. If you decided to hang out a shingle and work for yourself, you’ll have to figure out the finer points of legal practice — like California filing fees — on your own.
As much as we hate, fear, and loathe California’s red light cameras, we have accepted that they are a part of our life.
But while we twiddle our thumbs and wait for an anti-camera activist to underwrite a ballot initiative banning the bane of our existence -- like this couple in Houston did -- some people are waging a war against red light cameras in California’s courts.
This week, Carmen Goldsmith sadly lost her traffic appeal in the Second Appellate District after the court ruled that red light cameras images are not hearsay evidence.
If you've ever filed your own petition or motion, you know the cardinal rule of courthouse decorum: Don't irk the clerk.
The court clerk's office is a fountain of information, and particularly helpful to neophyte attorneys who are learning to navigate the logistics of lawyering, but clerks are still human. They make mistakes. And Sixth Appellate District Court judges will scold clerks, just as they do attorneys, when those mistakes interfere with a case.
Last week, we told you about a default judgment appeal in which California’s Fourth Appellate District ruled that a plaintiff isn’t guaranteed a win simply because he filed an unopposed motion for default judgment.
In the opinion, the court spent a bit of time explaining that, even when faced with silent opposition, the plaintiff must offer facts to support the specific judgment he is seeking.
But the plaintiff wasn’t the only one who received a lesson in civil procedure; the Fourth Appellate District had words of wisdom for the trial court as well.
