Several months ago we wrote about the massive budget cuts expected to affect the Los Angeles Superior Court ("LASC"), the largest trial court in the nation. Now LASC has announced how the cuts will be implemented, and it is not a pretty picture: Total cuts...
California is diverse in many ways, including the number of different languages used both in the home and in commerce. In business transactions, thousands upon thousands of consumer contracts are negotiated each day in California in a language other than English. But what...
We have all heard horror stories about hit-and-run drivers or automobile accidents where the party at fault has no insurance. In California, it has been estimated that as many as one in seven drivers on the road are uninsured, and as many as one in three are underinsured. The odds of...
Earlier this month, the Los Angeles Superior Court announced a new round of deep cuts in courtroom staffing, and the closing or consolidating of several courtrooms. Since the recession of 2008, this largest trial court in the nation has lost more than 500 of its staff...
When non-lawyers think of contracts, they usually imagine a formalized document that has a place for two or more signatures, next to a line for the date of signing. Many non-lawyers also recognize that “oral” agreements can be legally binding as well. But what about a...
Last year around this time we reviewed several pieces of legislation which California's then-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had vetoed, claiming that the proposed laws were “anti-business,” or that they exposed California employers to frivolous lawsuits. In 2011, the Legislature passed many of the same measures, with high...
More often than might be imagined, clients ask whether they can have a partnership with only one partner. A recent case from the California Court of Appeal has held, for the first time, that a partnership (not surprisingly) must have at least two partners. In Corrales v. Corrales, decided...
Last month an advocacy group calling itself the American Tort Reform Association published its annual list of what it calls "Judicial Hellholes," and California earned the dubious distinction of coming in toward the top of the list (having been narrowly defeated for first place by the court system in...
Both houses of California's legislature have been held by the Democratic party since 1996. However, with the exception of Gray Davis (who was recalled from office by the voters), the governor's mansion has been held by the Republican party since 1982. There is little wonder that a...
The Journal of the American Bar Association recently reported that 295 judges at a judicial conference were given a three-question test, as part of a study to determine how judges make decisions. The questions, devised by a professor at MIT, were geared toward assessing whether judges are...
