May 28, 2026
Supreme Court of California
The Rule of J.O. v. Superior Court is that if a party timely objects to a Code of Civil Procedure section 170.6 motion and makes a prima facie showing that the motion's proponent is lodging bad faith blanket challenges against a judge, a court may look beyond the section 170.6 affidavit or oral statement and inquire into the legitimacy of the party's assertions of prejudice, under circumstances where bad faith blanket abuses of section 170.6 materially impair the judiciary's constitutional function to effectively administer justice.
April 16, 2026
Court of Appeal of the State of California, Fourth Appellate District, Division Two
The Rule of The People v. The Superior Court of Riverside County is that a former prosecutor must be disqualified from presiding over a Racial Justice Act evidentiary hearing when they were directly involved in making charging decisions and present at staffing meetings where homicide filing decisions were made during the relevant time period being analyzed for institutional bias, under circumstances where the judge's personal involvement in the decision-making process being scrutinized might cause an objective observer to reasonably doubt the judge's impartiality.
4/14/26
Court of Appeal of the State of California, First Appellate District, Division Four
The Rule of Zand v. Sukumar is that an appellant cannot use the doctrine of voidness to collaterally attack a final appellate judgment by claiming trial court orders were void, when the challenged orders rest on errors that are merely in excess of jurisdiction rather than fundamental jurisdictional defects, under circumstances where the appellant has already appealed the underlying orders and lost.