California Legal Brief

The Rule of J.M. v. Illuminate Education, Inc. is that an educational technology company that collects and stores student medical information to help school districts assess educational needs is not a "provider of health care" under the Confidentiality of Medical Information Act (CMIA), and students are not "customers" under the Customer Records Act (CRA), under circumstances where the company provides services to school districts rather than directly to individuals for medical diagnosis/treatment or personal health record management.

The Rule of The Chemical Toxin Working Group is that Proposition 65's 60-day pre-suit notice substantially complies with regulatory requirements when it provides the name and contact information of the noticing entity's outside counsel rather than a responsible individual within the noticing entity, under circumstances where the notice otherwise identifies the alleged violation with sufficient specificity to enable prosecuting agencies to assess the claim and allow violators to cure violations.

The Rule of Jessica M. is that section 3051's youth offender parole provisions do not unconstitutionally amend an initiative statute when the initiative made only technical restatements and clarifications to existing sentencing provisions without substantive changes, under circumstances where the challenged statutory provisions were not integral to accomplishing the electorate's goals in enacting the initiative.

The Rule of Gonzalez v. Community Mortuary is that the affirmative defense of impracticability of performance is an equitable defense that must be decided by a judge, not a jury, under circumstances where a party seeks excuse from contract performance due to events making performance impracticable through no fault of their own.

The Rule of Aerni is that section 1940.1 does not require individualized proof that each class member used the hotel as their primary residence; rather, whether a hotel is "residential" is a hotel-wide inquiry based on the character and intended/actual use of the hotel as a whole, under circumstances where plaintiffs seek class certification for claims alleging the "28-day shuffle" practice at residential hotels.

The Rule of NNN Capital Fund I, LLC v. Mikles is that lack of standing is a jurisdictional defect that can be raised for the first time on appeal and requires vacation of an arbitration award and remand for factual determination of standing, under circumstances where purported liquidating trustees may not have been properly elected under the company's operating agreement.

The Rule of Bartholomew v. Parking Concepts is that collecting and maintaining individuals' ALPR information without implementing and making public the statutorily required policy harms these individuals by violating their right to know, under the California Automated License Plate Recognition Law (Civil Code sections 1798.90.5-1798.90.551).

The Rule of Bartholomew v. Parking Concepts, Inc. is that collecting and using license plate information through an automated system without implementing and making publicly available the statutorily required usage and privacy policy constitutes "harm" under the ALPR Law sufficient to state a cause of action, under circumstances where an entity operates cameras and computer algorithms to automatically read and convert license plate images into computer-readable data.

The Rule of Parsonage v. Wal-Mart Associates, Inc. is that ICRAA authorizes consumers to recover the statutory sum of $10,000 as a remedy for a violation of their statutory rights, without any further showing of concrete injury or adverse employment decision, under circumstances where an employer fails to comply with any requirement of ICRAA's disclosure and consent provisions.

The Rule of Sorokunov v. NetApp is that an arbitration award finding that a plaintiff did not suffer individual Labor Code violations can preclude the same plaintiff from claiming standing as an "aggrieved employee" in a PAGA action based on the identical violations, under circumstances where the plaintiff fully litigated the Labor Code violations in arbitration with a final award against them.

The Rule of Albarghouti is that the California False Claims Act creates a 60-day default sealing period, after which the seal lifts automatically absent the government's request for an extension, under circumstances where a qui tam plaintiff files the complaint in camera, serves the Attorney General by certified mail, and the government neither requests a seal extension nor provides notice of its intervention decision within 60 days.

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 Walton v. Victor Valley Community College District is that postsecondary nursing students performing required clinical rotations qualify as "unpaid interns" under FEHA regardless of their student status, and are entitled to protection from sexual harassment and discrimination, under circumstances where District faculty supervise the clinical work and control the details of the internship.