Can the selection of a roommate give rise to a legal claim for discrimination? The Ninth Circuit recently weighed in.

Corporate employers with employees located outside California will have to decide whether to agree to send any out-of-state employees to California for future Person Most Qualified/Knowledgeable depositions.

Homeowners sued their lenders, creatively claiming that the lender had a separate duty to disclose to each of them the lender’s intent to defraud them on their loans.

The new California Rules of Court have eliminated the requirement that paper copies of non-California authorities be lodged with the court when cited in a brief or memorandum.

The obligations of counsel at trial and misconduct in ignoring the motion in limine ordered by the trial court have recently been clarified by the Court of Appeal.

The Supreme Court held that it is unlawful to terminate an employee who made oral complaints about his employment, the anti-retaliation statute applies both to written and oral complaints.

Even California’s bent towards environmental protection could not prevent a court from agreeing that even trees may qualify as an unlawful “spite fence” in California. A “Spite Fence,” which may be prohibited by court order under California law, is defined as “[a]ny . . . structure” over 10 feet that was “maliciously erected or maintained for the purpose of annoying [a neighbor].”

When is a retraction not a retraction? When a court edits it. In Kelly Sutherlin McLeod Architecture, Inc. v. Schneickert, the California Court of Appeal ruled that if an arbitration agreement is broad enough and if the applicable arbitration rules are, too, then an arbitrator may require a retraction of defamatory statements.  However, the appellate court [...]

While Internet users may presume that their anonymous posts on message boards and social media sites will remain anonymous, web surfers may want to think twice before they click “post” as a Ninth Circuit opinion in 2011 allowed the unmasking of anonymous online speakers engaged in commercial speech.

While many victims of the so-called “Nigerian e-mail scam” would be too embarrassed to trumpet that fact, others end up infamous for their victimhood like the appellant in a published opinion of the California Court of Appeal in Riverside. Also known as an advance-fee fraud, the Nigerian scam baits the victim with an advance sum [...]