Div. Five of the First District Court of Appeal has admonished two sets of attorneys for misconduct for failing to comply with local appellate rules requiring that any party “who is aware of a bankruptcy that could cause or impose a stay” to give notice of the filing, rejecting both sides’ attempt to excuse their silence by asserting that insolvency experts informed them that the plaintiff’s filing would not affect the appeal.

The International AI Safety report is an annual survey of technological progress and the risks it is creating across multiple areas, from deepfakes to the jobs market.

From the 2000-01 term through the 2015-16 term, the court routinely issued between 15 percent and 30 percent of its decisions during the period from October to January. Earlier decisions were often straightforward cases. Beginning around 2016, the number of early-term decisions began to fall. 

(Subscription required) In a 6-1 decision, the California Supreme Court clarified on Monday that courts must “closely scrutinize the terms of difficult-to-read contracts for unfairness or one-sidedness,” but the “illegibility”—font size, placement, prominence, etc.—of agreements do not themselves indicate that it is unconscionable.