Excerpt: ...dings and orders in federal district court case Curl v. CitiMortgage, Case No. 14‐cv‐01829. This request is opposed. The request is granted. Evid. Code §§ 452, 453. Analysis Both sides brief this demurrer much as if there had been no prior rulings on point. In fact, however, the Court's ruling on the demurrer to plaintiff's second amended complaint is quite sufficient to dispose of the present demurrer, because nothing material has changed....

Excerpt: ... is a personal injury case involving a vehicle collision. Plaintiff's complaint alleges that on March 17, 2016, plaintiff was a pedestrian when she was struck by a vehicle driven by defendant Jose Concepcion Solorio. (See Attachment to Complaint, at p. 2.) On June 26, 2017 plaintiff filed her form complaint for damages against the driver, Jose Solorio, and the vehicle's registered owner, Maria Solorio. The complaint also included Doe defendants 1...

Excerpt: ...§ 3294. Section 3294(c) provides, in pertinent part: (1) Malice means conduct which is intended by the defendant to cause injury to the plaintiff or despicable conduct which is carried on by the defendant and with a willful and conscious disregard for the rights and safety of others. (2) Oppression means despicable conduct that subjects a person to cruel and unjust hardship in conscious disregard of that person's rights. (3) Fraud means an inten...

Excerpt: ...ells's employer), on one hand, and Larios on the other; where relevant those distinctions will be addressed. Otherwise, the analysis applies equally to all defendants' motions. Relevant Allegations Plaintiff Joseph LaCome is an attorney licensed to practice law in Texas and currently practicing immigration law in California. (Comp. ¶7.) He works on immigration cases, including with some detained clients at the West County Detention Facility in R...

Excerpt: ...rted responses to each such discovery request, including both substantive answers and various objections. None of those responses, however, was verified. The Hesses' motions raise two distinct sets of problems. First, they correctly note (as plaintiffs effectively concede) that all of these responses were required to be verified, and were not. Second, they argue that even if plaintiffs provide verifications before hearing on the motions, many of ...

Excerpt: ...aintiffs entered into a Residential Purchase Agreement with seller, Kenneth Pregler. Pregler owned the property from October 1, 2004 to October 2, 2014. Defendants Solano Pacific Corporation and Rob Nubla were the selling brokers on the property sale at issue in this case. There is no substantive distinction between the two for purposes of this motion, and they will be referred to as the Brokers. The McGuires' property adjoins the Brenkles' prope...

Excerpt: ...s follows (block capitals omitted): Plaintiffs' decedent, Jovante Prothro, was shot and killed by Dewaun Rice. The City of Richmond, the Office of Neighborhood Safety and/or Devone Boggan knew or should have known that Dawaun Rice was a danger to the public at large at [sic] more particularly, plaintiffs' decedent. Defendants and each of them had information that should have been brought to the police department regarding the violent and criminal...

Excerpt: ...d the Complaint does not state facts sufficient to support a claim for punitive damages. “A motion for judgment on the pleadings performs the same function as a general demurrer, and hence attacks only defects disclosed on the face of the pleadings or by matters that can be judicially noticed.” (Cloud v. Northrop Grumman Corp. (1998) 67 Cal.App.4th 995, 999.) Because defendant has already filed an Answer to the Complaint, a motion for judgmen...

Excerpt: ...in Iran – and centering more specifically on whether a certain legal document (a power of attorney, or POA) was or was not forged. CONTRA COSTA SUPERIOR COURT MARTINEZ, CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT: 12 HEARING DATE: 08/03/18 ‐ 2 ‐ The parties are all sisters of each other, or their respective husbands. The plaintiffs are a wife and husband, residing in California – Shahrzad Bakhtiari (Shahrzad), and her husband Sia Bakhtiari. The defendants are ...

Excerpt: ...f action that go beyond what was alleged in the Plaintiffs' government tort claim. For the reasons set forth further below, the demurrer is sustained, without leave to amend. Legal Standard “The function of a demurrer is to test the sufficiency of the complaint as a matter of law.” Holiday Matinee, Inc. v. Rambus, Inc. (2004) 118 Cal.App.4th 1413, 1420. A complaint “is sufficient if it alleges ultimate rather than evidentiary facts” (Doe ...

Excerpt: ... Plaintiff is a California resident. Defendant resides in South Carolina. This case arises out of defendant Miao's operation of the Biang‐Wang.com website. In a nutshell, plaintiff contends that third parties have defamed plaintiff in materials posted on that website. He contends that defendant Miao has a contractual duty to delete such defamatory material from his website. Plaintiff asserts causes of action for breach of contract; tortious bre...

Excerpt: ... amount to be secured by the attachment is $110,239.31, which includes attorney fees, estimated at $8,000. Since defendant is a corporation, Plaintiff seeks to attach “any property” of defendant. An undertaking has not been filed. Defendant California Optical Corp. (dba CalOptix) appears specially for the sole purpose of objecting to jurisdiction and maintaining its right to opposes the application for right to attach order. Defendant opposes...

Excerpt: ...iff requests a lodestar multiplier of 1.2. The Court does not think the multiplier is justified. Plaintiff won this case, but it did so partly on the basis of TWCM's admissions. The initial merits briefing by both sides was sufficiently scanty that the Court found it necessary to call for further and better briefs on contract construction. And while the course of this litigation was unjustifiably protracted by TWCM's strategy and tactics, that fa...

Excerpt: ...en REIT, LP (“Evergreen”); and Store It REIT, Inc. (“Store It”). Evergreen owns TIC 4. Store It is the limited partner of Evergreen. (Store It is now in bankruptcy and not involved in this motion.) The sole defendant is River Oaks Storage, LLC (“defendant”). The first three causes of action in the complaint (breach of contract, specific performance, and declaratory relief) all asserted the same substantive claim, arising under a contr...

Excerpt: ...er, Seterus makes no serious effort to show the relevance of the matters inquired into, and no such relevance is obvious from the interrogatories. The Court cannot see how plaintiffs' possible use of drugs at other times and other places could bear on their CONTRA COSTA SUPERIOR COURT MARTINEZ, CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT: 12 HEARING DATE: 07/27/18 ‐ 2 ‐ responsibility for their relative's alleged manufacture of BHO. That is true even if the drug s...

Excerpt: ...ubject to the Protective Order previously entered in this case. The District's opposition brief stresses the legal concerns arising if such material is produced without either the parents' consent or a court order. Right – but getting that court order is what these motions are for. The District doesn't really deny plaintiff's representation that in meet‐andconfer, the District didn't raise any real objection to this discovery other than needi...

Excerpt: ... the violations of sexual misconduct and dating violence. As to the most serious charge of sexual assault, however, the Court finds no procedural or substantive error in the disciplinary proceedings or result, and hence the petition is denied as to that violation and the resulting expulsion. Because the Respondent in the disciplinary proceeding is the Petitioner in this Court, and the Complainant in the disciplinary proceeding is not a party at a...

Excerpt: ...ery, trespass, trespass, and infliction of emotional distress. Obviously those allegations cannot be taken literally as to UPS, which as a corporate entity is incapable of doing any of these things except through human agents. The Complaint does not expressly allege that the individual defendant (Defroscia) was an employee of UPS and acting in the course of his employment, though the Court assumes that that is what plaintiff has in mind (and UPS'...

Excerpt: ...e argues that the arbitration agreement at issue is unconscionable, and accordingly cannot be enforced. Waiver The Court must consider six factors to determine whether BACR has waived any right it might have had to insist the present dispute with Saeteurn be arbitrated: (1) Whether [BACR's] actions are inconsistent with the right to arbitrate; (2) Whether the “litigation machinery has been substantially invoked” and the parties “were well i...

Excerpt: ...olation of Civil Code § 2923.6; (2) violation of Civil Code § 2923.7; (3) negligence; (4) unfair business practices; and (5) violation of civil code § 2923.5. Defendants' demurrer is sustained without leave to amend. The Court will discuss each cause of action in turn. As an overview, however, this is a very straightforward matter. The Court sustained these defendants' demurrer to the First Amended Complaint (FAC), largely because it did not a...

Excerpt: ...efendant's requests for admission. On defendant's motion, therefore, this Court granted defendant's motion to deem matters admitted. Those deemed admissions are conclusively fatal to plaintiff's entire case. Having thus admitted the falsity of his entire case, plaintiff has no further case to pursue. This result was not inevitable. In its tentative ruling granting the motion to deem matters admitted, the Court went out of its way to point out to ...

Excerpt: ...procedural grounds, which the Court discusses in more detail below. That result, however, appears to be contrary to the preferences and expectations of both sides, each of which seems genuinely to desire the Court's rulings on the merits issues presented in both motions. These procedural problems are simply ignored in the moving and opposition papers. Neither side's motion pays any attention to the technical defects its own motion raises. Nor has...

Excerpt: ... proposed order with a declaration confirming that no responses were served prior to the hearing. In the event that defendant has served responses prior to the hearing, no matters will be deemed admitted. The motion to compel responses to document requests is granted. Defendant Yunck must serve responses to plaintiff's first set of document requests (served on or about February 22, 2018), without objections, within 30 days following service of th...

Excerpt: ...'s file that any attempts at meet and confer were made. CONTRA COSTA SUPERIOR COURT MARTINEZ, CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT: 12 HEARING DATE: 07/06/18 ‐ 5 ‐ Compounding its failure to meet and confer, it appears that when the Flandermeyers offered to stipulate to amend their complaint, Werner refused to so stipulate. Resolving a motion to strike punitive damages by way of a stipulated amendment is, of course, precisely the sort of resolution that the...

Excerpt: ...lodge a proposed order with a declaration confirming that no responses were served prior to the hearing. In the event that defendant has served responses prior to the hearing, no matters will be deemed admitted. The motion to compel responses to document requests is granted. Defendant Ewing must serve responses to plaintiff's first set of document requests (served on or about February 22, 2018), without objections, within 30 days following servic...