California Legal Brief

The Rule of J.N. et al. v. Jeffrey Goldberg is that a motion for Code of Civil Procedure section 128.7 sanctions must comply with statutory notice requirements by specifying the hearing date in the initial notice of motion to trigger the mandatory 21-day safe harbor period, under circumstances where the superior court's electronic Court Reservation System makes it impossible to obtain a hearing date more than three days in advance but the safe harbor period requires 21 days.

The Rule of In re the Domestic Partnership of Torres Campos and Munoz is that a party forfeits the right to challenge a trial court's reliance on fictitious case authorities when that party's own counsel drafted and submitted the order containing those fabricated citations without objecting or alerting the court to the error, under circumstances where the party had ample opportunity to verify the citations and correct the error in the trial court.

The Rule of In re Marriage of Hoch is that a family court abuses its discretion under Family Code section 271 by imposing sanctions against a party for refusing to stipulate to permit the opposing party to amend a petition from legal separation to dissolution of marriage, under circumstances where the refusal is based on conscientiously held religious beliefs and the moving party could have avoided the costs by initially filing a dissolution petition.

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.

The Rule of Amezcua v. Superior Court is that trial courts may not condition leave to amend pleadings on payment of opposing party's attorney fees unless specifically authorized by statute or agreement between parties, under Code of Civil Procedure section 473(a) which contains no attorney fee-shifting provision.