(Subscription required) California’s Supreme Court on Monday appeared poised to order Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco to return the 650,000 ballots he seized earlier this year amid a local group’s claims of election irregularities. The justices, hearing oral arguments in San Francisco in two related cases, also seemed prepared to find that the attorney general has broad constitutional authority to stop investigations like Bianco’s.

The California Supreme Court dealt a blow to a local government’s ability to seize water utilities on Monday, ruling that courts get the final say on whether a public utility is necessary. Apple Valley, located in San Bernardino County, California, will have to go back to the drawing board for its plans to take over the privately owned water utility, Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company.

Div. Three of the Fourth District Court of Appeal has held that a ban on filing charges that could have been brought during an earlier prosecution does not preclude a criminal complaint accusing a man of violating a Penal Code section relating to large-capacity magazines where similar counts were dismissed in an earlier case in the interests of justice due to a since-vacated federal decision declaring the law unconstitutional.

A unanimous California Supreme Court yesterday invalidated a “practice” by the Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board to “equitably toll” a statutory deadline in order to grant itself more time to act on a petition for reconsideration of a decision by an administrative judge, highlighting that the doctrine has only ever been applied to benefit litigants and never to give flexibility to an agency charged by the Legislature with making a timely decision.