1st District Court of Appeal, Administrative Law, Constitutional Law, Real Estate Law
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July 7, 2026
The First District holds that Corporations Code section 14300's mandatory cancellation of a public entity's appurtenant water company shares does not violate the California Constitution's limited exception permitting public entities to hold such shares.
1st District Court of Appeal, Criminal Law, Litigation
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July 6, 2026
The First District publishes this opinion specifically to flag a recurring error: at a section 1172.6 evidentiary hearing, the trial court is an independent fact-finder who must decide whether the petitioner IS guilty beyond a reasonable doubt under current law — not whether a jury 'could' convict them.
1st District Court of Appeal, Criminal Law, Litigation
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June 30, 2026
The First District holds that a trial court's mathematical error in calculating presentence custody credits is a clerical error the court can correct at any time — but that correction does not render the judgment nonfinal or entitle the defendant to full resentencing under ameliorative legislation, rejecting a contrary line of cases.
1st District Court of Appeal, Civil Procedure, Labor & Employment Law, Litigation
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June 30, 2026
The First District grants a writ of mandate requiring Tesla to face five joint complaints from 440 Black factory workers, holding that permissive joinder under CCP § 378 is proper where all plaintiffs allege injury from the same factory-wide pattern of racial discrimination — and that manageability concerns cannot justify ordering mass individual re-filings.
1st District Court of Appeal, Constitutional Law, Criminal Law
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June 30, 2026
The First District affirms dismissal of three state charges against David DePape — including attempted murder — under California's statutory double jeopardy protection, holding that mental-state elements cannot save a state charge when the required physical act was already proved in a prior federal conviction.
1st District Court of Appeal, Labor & Employment Law, Litigation
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June 25, 2026
A furniture delivery driver who never crosses state lines but delivers goods that arrived in California from out of state is a "transportation worker" exempt from the Federal Arbitration Act, the First District Court of Appeal holds, affirming the driver's right to pursue his Labor Code and PAGA claims in court.
1st District Court of Appeal, Civil Procedure, Criminal Law
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June 24, 2026
The First District holds that California's 2025 elimination of joint and several liability in juvenile restitution cases applies prospectively only, leaving pre-2025 restitution orders intact even for pending appeals.
1st District Court of Appeal, Civil Procedure, Insurance Law, Litigation
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June 22, 2026
California's First Appellate District affirmed denial of class certification in a UCL action alleging Transamerica's bundled Trendsetter LB life insurance policy misled buyers about the cost of included accelerated death benefits, holding that individual differences in agent communications and policy data pages prevented class-wide proof of deception.
1st District Court of Appeal, Administrative Law, Labor & Employment Law
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June 22, 2026
San Francisco's First Appellate District reversed a PERB order requiring the City to submit its attorneys' at-will status to binding interest arbitration, holding that the San Francisco Charter's civil service provisions place that question outside the scope of the MMBA's interest arbitration process.
1st District Court of Appeal, Criminal Law, Litigation
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June 17, 2026
The First District reversed a second-degree murder conviction because the trial court failed to clarify — when the jury asked mid-deliberation — that the rule ending self-defense once danger passes does not also eliminate the lesser defense of imperfect self-defense.
1st District Court of Appeal, Constitutional Law, Criminal Law
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June 12, 2026
When a SWAT team uses gas, drones, and robots to flush a suspect from his apartment, the resulting arrest is treated as an in-home arrest — but California's First District upheld the conviction anyway because the underlying warrant affidavit, even with false statements excised, still established probable cause.
1st District Court of Appeal, Civil Procedure, Litigation, Real Estate Law
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June 11, 2026
When a county names the relatives of a deceased property owner in a housing receivership proceeding and then fails to establish their liability, those relatives are entitled to recover attorney fees from the county under Health and Safety Code section 17980.7(c)(11), which overrides the older, more general bar on cost awards against municipalities.
1st District Court of Appeal, Civil Procedure, Litigation
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June 11, 2026
A California appeals court upheld $6,000 in sanctions against a law firm whose outsourced contract attorney filed a brief containing two nonexistent case citations and eight fabricated quotations — likely generated by AI — confirming that attorneys of record bear ultimate responsibility for the accuracy of every filing regardless of who drafted it.
1st District Court of Appeal, Labor & Employment Law, Litigation
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June 11, 2026
Tesla's yard hostlers — who move 53-foot interstate trailers within factory grounds to facilitate unloading — are 'transportation workers engaged in interstate commerce' exempt from the Federal Arbitration Act, the First District held, because their work is a necessary step in completing an interstate delivery.
1st District Court of Appeal, Family Law, Real Estate Law
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June 5, 2026
The First District holds that a divorce settlement awarding one spouse the marital home 'and all debts thereon' does not implicitly require removing the other spouse from the mortgage, reinforcing that such obligations must be explicitly stated.
1st District Court of Appeal, Civil Procedure, Environmental Law, Litigation
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June 5, 2026
The First District affirms that a CEQA challenge to the Bay Bridge's Bay Lights 360 LED installation is time-barred, holding that a subsequent Caltrans encroachment permit does not create a new project or restart the limitations period, and issue preclusion bars relitigating questions resolved in an earlier dismissed suit.
1st District Court of Appeal, Civil Procedure, Labor & Employment Law, Litigation
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June 4, 2026
The First District Court of Appeal held that California plaintiffs may pursue statutory damages under the Fair Credit Reporting Act without proving concrete injury, departing from the Fifth District's Limon decision and reversing a class decertification order.
1st District Court of Appeal, Business Transactions, Litigation
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June 4, 2026
The First District held that under the Song-Beverly Act, a component manufacturer that warranties only its component is obligated to replace or reimburse only that component — not the entire consumer product in which it is incorporated.
1st District Court of Appeal, Family Law, Personal Injury & Tort
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June 4, 2026
The First District affirmed a $24.7 million verdict against a foster family agency, holding that FFAs have a duty to protect foster children from abuse they knew or should have known about, but rejecting both an unlimited protective duty and one requiring actual knowledge.
1st District Court of Appeal, Administrative Law, Constitutional Law, Real Estate Law
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June 2, 2026
First District holds that a ratepayer’s Proposition 218 challenge to water rates is permanently barred after she failed to participate in the water district’s validation action within the 120-day window set by Government Code section 53759.
1st District Court of Appeal, Administrative Law, Environmental Law, Litigation
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May 29, 2026
The First District holds that San Francisco has discretion to develop a fishing program and complete CEQA review before applying for a water supply permit to open the Calaveras Reservoir to public fishing.
1st District Court of Appeal, Criminal Law, Litigation
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May 28, 2026
The First District reverses the denial of compassionate release for a prisoner whose severe medical deterioration — complete loss of lower extremity function, fused spine, and incontinence — made any realistic possibility of future harm impossible.
1st District Court of Appeal, Environmental Law, Litigation
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May 22, 2026
California's First District Court of Appeal holds that the doctrine of substantial compliance applies to Proposition 65 pre-suit notice requirements, reversing a trial court that dismissed a toxic-substances lawsuit for failing to identify a responsible individual by name in the notice.
1st District Court of Appeal, Criminal Law, Insurance Law, Litigation
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May 21, 2026
First District affirms bail bond forfeiture, holding that a trial court's on-the-record acknowledgment of an off-the-record explanation for a defendant's nonappearance suffices to retain jurisdiction over the bond under Penal Code section 1305.1.
1st District Court of Appeal, Criminal Law
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May 15, 2026
The First District Court of Appeal affirmed a middle-term sentence for witness dissuasion, holding that evidence of childhood trauma alone does not trigger the lower-term presumption under Penal Code section 1170(b)(6) without sufficient evidence linking that trauma to the specific offense.