A Tranquil High Court? And other legal cases & trends this week ending June 16, 2023

Tim Kowal June 16, 2023

Here are some legal trends and trivia from this week:

U.S. Supreme Court: Liberal justices' 'dissent rate' lowest since Roberts joined in 2005. (Wash. Examiner)
But women are underrepresented at oral argument at the Supreme Court: just 20 women—19% of the 103 total advocates— argued before the justices. (Ben Shatz)
⏳Cal. Supreme Court is taking longer to decide its cases. (David Ettinger)
But the Cal. Supreme Court ranks high in diversity, says the Brennan Center for Justice. (David Ettinger)
Cal. Supreme Court bars treble damages against a public entity for child sex abuse coverup because government can’t be liable for punitive damages. Los Angeles Unified School District v. Superior Court (Doe), 2023 S.O.S. 1809. (MetNews) The holding overrules three of the Court’s prior cases. (David Ettinger)
But trial court was justified in imposing evidentiary sanctions on a school district for negligently erasing a videotape of a sexual assault on a student. Victor Valley Union High School District v. Superior Court (Doe), 2023 S.O.S. 1731. (MetNews)
Check your break room jukebox: The Ninth Circuit, reversing a trial court's dismissal, holds that it might well constitute sexual harassment for a business to play "sexually derogatory" or "misogynistic" music in the workplace. Sharp v. S&S Activewear (9th Cir. - June 7, 2023). (SoCalAppNews)
Who likes legalese? No one—not even lawyers. So researchers drilled down to the cause: the “copy-and-paste hypothesis”: lawyers imitate what previous lawyers have done because the legalese can be incorporated routinely into contracts drafted for clients. (Ben Shatz)
Look out, UC Berkeley: The “Berkeley Library” naming has been canceled by Ireland’s premier university, Trinity College. A NY Times piece on the change noted that the library’s namesake “owned slaves in colonial Rhode Island and wrote pamphlets supportive of slavery.” (SoCalAppNews) Unless you are prepared to yield everything, yield nothing.

Tim Kowal is an appellate specialist certified by the California State Bar Board of Legal Specialization. Tim helps trial attorneys and clients win their cases and avoid error on appeal. He co-hosts the Cal. Appellate Law Podcast at CALpodcast.com, and publishes summaries of cases and appellate tips for trial attorneys. Contact Tim at [email protected] or (949) 676-9989.

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Show neither partiality to the weak nor deference to the mighty, but judge your fellow men justly.

— Leviticus

"Upon putting laws into writing, they became even harder to change than before, and a hundred legal fictions rose to reconcile them with reality."

— Will Durant

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."

— Plato (427-347 B.C.)

"A judge is a law student who grades his own papers."

— H.L. Mencken

"Moot points have to be settled somehow, once they get thrust upon us. If an assertion cannot be proved, then it must be settled some other way, and nearly all of these ways are unfair to somebody."

—T.H. White, The Once and Future King

“It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?”

— James Madison, Federalist 62

"So far as the beginnings of law had theories, the first theory of liability was in terms of a duty to buy off the vengeance of him to whom an injury had been done whether by oneself or by something in one's power. The idea is put strikingly in the Anglo-Saxon legal proverb, 'Buy spear from side or bear it,' that is, buy off the feud or fight it out."

— Roscoe Pound, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Law

"Counsel on the firing line in an actual trial must be prepared for surprises, including requests for amendments of pleading. They cannot ask that a judgment afterwards obtained be set aside merely because their equilibrium was slightly disturbed by an unexpected motion."

— Posz v. Burchell (1962) 209 Cal.App.2d 324, 334

"At common law, barratry was 'the offense of frequently exciting and stirring up suits and quarrels' (4 Blackstone, Commentaries 134) and was punished as a misdemeanor."

— Rubin v. Green (1993) 4 Cal.4th 1187

"It may be that the court is thought to be excessively legalistic. I should be sorry to think that it is anything else."

— Hon. Sir Owen Dixon, Chief Justice of Australia

"God made the angels to show Him splendor, … Man He made to serve Him wittily, in the tangle of his mind."

— Sir Thomas More in Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons

A Tranquil High Court? And other legal cases & trends this week ending June 16, 2023

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Show neither partiality to the weak nor deference to the mighty, but judge your fellow men justly. — Leviticus

"Upon putting laws into writing, they became even harder to change than before, and a hundred legal fictions rose to reconcile them with reality." — Will Durant

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws." — Plato (427-347 B.C.)

"A judge is a law student who grades his own papers." — H.L. Mencken

"Moot points have to be settled somehow, once they get thrust upon us. If an assertion cannot be proved, then it must be settled some other way, and nearly all of these ways are unfair to somebody." —T.H. White, The Once and Future King

"At common law, barratry was 'the offense of frequently exciting and stirring up suits and quarrels' (4 Blackstone, Commentaries 134) and was punished as a misdemeanor." — Rubin v. Green (1993) 4 Cal.4th 1187

"It may be that the court is thought to be excessively legalistic. I should be sorry to think that it is anything else." — Hon. Sir Owen Dixon, Chief Justice of Australia

"God made the angels to show Him splendor, … Man He made to serve Him wittily, in the tangle of his mind." — Sir Thomas More in Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons