Summary Winning a lawsuit is only half the job. If the company or person that owes you money has no assets, the judgment can be close to worthless on its own. A recent California Court of Appeal decision, 8451 Melrose Property, LLC v. Akhtarzad, gives businesses another way to collect, letting a court add new parties to a judgment after …
This Litigation Shortcut Could Cost You Your Right to Appeal
Summary When your business files a lawsuit, an early ruling from the judge can change the entire course of the case. If that ruling goes against you, it may be tempting to look for the fastest way to get in front of the Court of Appeal. A recent California Supreme Court decision shows why one shortcut, voluntarily dismissing your case …
Your AI Policy Won’t Save You If Nobody Reads the Output
A California Court of Appeal sanctioned an attorney $1,500 and forwarded its opinion to the State Bar after his brief quoted cases that do not exist, quotations generated by AI and never verified. The lawyer had an AI policy requiring human review. The court held the policy itself was not enough, because it never put a competent person on the …
Dismissed Twice, Still Not Over: California Limits the Two-Dismissal Rule
If you’re defending a lawsuit and the plaintiff drops it, then files somewhere else and drops it again, you’d be forgiven for thinking the matter is finished. There’s even a federal rule that seems to promise as much. The California Supreme Court just made clear that the two-dismissal rule doesn’t reach nearly as far as many defendants assume. In Doe …
Your Project’s Low Environmental Risk Won’t Win You a CEQA Exemption
Here’s the trade every developer knows. A CEQA categorical exemption means no environmental impact report, no months of study, no public comment cycle. You show your project fits an exempt category, and you move. A unanimous California Supreme Court just rewrote the argument you have to make to claim one of the most common of those exemptions, and if you’ve …




