Retired Associate Justice Thomas L. Willhite Jr. of the California Court of Appeal, Second District, Division Four, joins Tim Kowal and Jeff Lewis to discuss nearly four decades in the legal system, from coordinating capital appeals at the California Attorney General's office to authoring roughly 2,000 appellate opinions. He serves as a mediator, arbitrator, and...
John Mitch Mitchell joins Tim Kowal to unpack Maniago v. Desert Cardiology Consultants’ Medical Group, a July 2026 California Supreme Court decision that shuts down a procedural shortcut California litigators have been relying on for years. Mitchell, who represented the plaintiffs on appeal, offers a candid, behind-the-scenes look at how a carefully planned litigation strategy...
Smart move by Jermaine Jackson to change his name to “Jacksun”—it got him out of a $6.5 million default judgment. (Sort of.) The Daily Journal recently published my article, "How One Vowel Beat a $6.5 Million Judgment" (Civil Procedure, July 20, 2026). The column details how Jackson legally changed the spelling of his surname years...
Why do tenants' rights cases end up on appeal—and what happens when the Ellis Act gets weaponized? Tenants' rights appellate attorney Fran Campbell joins Jeff Lewis as a guest host while Tim Kowal is on vacation, sharing hard-won insight from landlord-tenant litigation, mobile home park law, and the appellate front lines of California's housing crisis....
One California city has been quietly collecting $5,000-per-incident fines from short-term vacation rental owners. And if the regime is struck down, the city may owe half a million dollars back. Former constitutional law attorney David Koslow joins Tim Kowal and Jeff Lewis to break down two Appellate Division challenges that expose a structural flaw in...
Why do writ petitions so often fail? Judge Tom Fay covers the technical writ rules that attorneys often overlook. In part 2 of our conversation with former lead writs attorney at the Santa Ana Court of Appeal, Judge Fay covers the CRC 8.486 and local rule requirements for your writ petition, the available remedies for...
Tom Fay spent years as the lead civil writs attorney for California's 4th District, Division 3, processing every emergency petition that crossed the court's threshold. Effective June 29, 2026, he's now Judge Tom Fay of the Orange County Superior Court. We caught Judge Fay between appointments for an inside look at what actually happens when...
One of just 12 California lawyers dual-certified in both family and appellate law, Lisa McCall has an unusually clear view of how family trial work plays out on appeal. Lisa shares the record‑killing mistakes family lawyers often make. And with 14 published opinions, Lisa shares about publish-worthy issues and her work on the amicus committee...
John Snow, Director of Legal and Trial Training at the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office and author of Rules to Speak By (Carolina Academic Press, 2026), joins Tim Kowal and Jeff Lewis to discuss what it actually takes to be an effective oral advocate. Snow has tried more than 30 cases to completion in state...
Drawing on 20 years observing attorney behavior, Hon. Stuart M. Rice (ret.), now at JAMS, speaks freely. This episode is a rare candid debrief from the other side of the bench. Key topics: Your next status conference is closer than you think. Hit play before it gets here—this episode will change how you read the...
Every litigator has a judge or two they would paper on sight. The peremptory challenge under Code of Civil Procedure section 170.6 seemingly gives an absolute right: one affidavit, no reasons given, no questions asked, and the judge is gone. That’s how it’s been done for nearly 50 years. But not anymore. If you or...
Does your office have a blank 170.6 form ready to go for a certain judge? Stop doing that. A 170.6 peremptory challenge is no longer automatic: the California Supreme Court now authorizes courts to look behind your 170.6. The touchstone is whether your 170.6 is based on a genuine belief of prejudice—or mere grievance. But...
The fall of copyright troll Prenda Law is, according to the ABA Journal, "part of legal folklore." We talk with the attorney who kicked over the first domino, Morgan Pietz. Prenda Law was the copyright trolling operation that filed approximately 20,000 abusive BitTorrent lawsuits targeting anonymous defendants for alleged pornography downloads. Morgan's work on that...
Everyone is watching Family Violence Appellate Project v. Superior Court (S288176) to see if the California Supreme Court is going to strike down the ban on electronic recording of court proceedings. There is a steady drumbeat in favor, including the Los Angeles County Superior Court and other courts. But are we missing a perspective? Stephanie...
The Honorable Tani Cantil-Sakauye led the state judiciary through the Great Recession's budget crisis, bail reform advocacy, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Now she has three new roles: President and CEO of the Public Policy Institute of California, a neutral at ADR Services, and a founding voice of the Alliance of Former Chief Justices. CJ Cantil-Sakauye...
In addition to having more than 100 published opinions and close to 100 oral arguments to his name, Jeremy B. Rosen is the managing partner of the Horvitz & Levy LLP San Francisco office. Jeremy is also nationally recognized for his First Amendment and anti-SLAPP work. Jeremy joins Jeff and Tim on the California Appellate...
Justice Ming Chin wrote more majority opinions in his first decade on the California Supreme Court than any colleague—then retired to discover that mediation feels a lot like his first judicial assignment in family law, where the goal was bringing people together rather than telling them what to do. Justice Ming’s biggest pet peeve as...
Legal writing authority Ross Guberman has been busy absorbing AI tools into his popular BriefCatch and now-related suite of writing tools. Ross returns to discuss how BriefCatch cousin app RealityCheck uses a traditional authority base plus AI power to ruthlessly search and destroy hallucinations in your briefs. Who else is using RealityCheck? Courts. So let...
The law is riddled with things "everybody knows" that aren't actually true. In this April Fool's-themed episode, Tim Kowal and Jeff Lewis discuss several legal myths, half-truths, and courtroom fictions—from rules of evidence to constitutional assumptions to a Scopes Monkey Trial mythology that is more Hollywood script than record. Key points: Miranda warnings aren't in...
Last month I had the pleasure of presenting to the Orange County Bar Association on a topic I return to often: how good cases die on appeal, not because the appellant was wrong on the merits, but because avoidable procedural mistakes made reversal impossible before the briefing even began. The talk was titled the "Appeals...
David Lat—founder of Above the Law and author and host of Original Jurisdiction blog and podcast—explains what these stories reveal about a legal profession navigating ideological warfare, economic disruption, and the enduring craft of persuasion. Paul Clement delivered what SCOTUSblog called "a master class in oral argument" in Trump v. Cook. Lat dissects what made...
wo explosive First Amendment cases from the Ninth Circuit—culture-war flashpoints are reshaping speech & religious-freedom doctrine… and judicial decorum. In B.B. v. Capistrano Unified, the court held that elementary students have enforceable free speech rights under *Tinker*, vacating summary judgment after a first grader was disciplined for giving a classmate a sweet drawing that ran...
Justice Kagan has more words about the emergency docket aka shadow docket. This one is about the 9th Circuit panel injunction of California's law requiring school officials not to share with parents when their children present as trans. The Supreme Court keeps the injunction in effect. And on the fee award front, big firms don't...
Three paradoxes feature in this episode: Paradox 1: You must disclose a bankruptcy stay to the Court of Appeal. What about a bankruptcy that does not create a stay? Answer: Yes, the disclose-bk-stay rule also means disclose a bk non-stay. Paradox 2: Deadbeat dad owes $500k. He settles and agrees to pay $250k. How much...
In Part 2 of our conversation with Michael Shipley, Tim and Jeff dig into the real-world fallout of California's no-horizontal-stare-decisis rule — and the structural fix Shipley has been developing to address it.Shipley walks Tim and Jeff through his proposed "mini-en banc" transfer mechanism — a way for the California Supreme Court to empower a...
California is the largest common-law jurisdiction where appellate courts don't follow each other—and it happened by accident. In Part 1 of this two-part episode, Michael Shipley explains how Bernard Witkin’s treatise reflections on case dicta became binding law, why the federal circuit model works differently, and what the rule costs practitioners and trial judges every...
Is your AI training data biased? And is using AI-generated reasoning plagiarism? James Mixon, Managing Attorney at California's Second District Court of Appeal, covers troubling topics on how lawyers should, and should not, use AI. In this second part of Tim and Jeff’s conversation, James discusses how we can detect and counteract bias baked into...
In the first half of their conversation with James Mixon, Managing Attorney at California's Second District Court of Appeal, Tim Kowal and Jeff Lewis ask what is healthy AI use, and unhealthy use? To help organize—yes! To replace judgment—no! Tip: When an attorney does not read AI output before filing a brief, expect sanctions. Disclaimer:...
Lemon Law lawyer Michelle Fonseca-Kamana discusses the seismic shifts in California lemon law—from the Supreme Court's decision in Rodriguez v. FCA US LLC (October 31, 2024) 17 Cal.5th 189 that effectively eliminated most used car claims, to the explosion in case filings (from 4,500 in 2015 to over 22,000 in 2023), to new legislative reforms under...
Here are a few cases I did not have time to write up but seemed either important or irritating enough to mention: Administering vaccines without disclosing contraindications can get your license pulled. If you're a veterinarian, that is. (There are far lighter penalties, I'm afraid, for lackadaisical administration of human vaccines.) Deol v. California Veterinary...
