Div. Seven of this district’s Court of Appeal held yesterday that a trial judge erred in ordering a new trial after a jury found for the City of Los Angeles in a case involving allegations that its police force negligently maintained a less-lethal tactical launcher—which was found to have a problem with its targeting system after a protestor was hit just below the eye, causing vision impairment—based on an erroneous understanding of res ipsa loquitur.

(Subscription required) Orange County Superior Court Judge Justin Glenn-Leistikow never intended to become a lawyer. After the dot-com crash derailed his programming career, he found his way to the public defender's office, where nearly two decades of trial work shaped the judicial philosophy he now brings to the criminal bench.

(Subscription required) A divided 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an Oregon school district's ban on an educational specialist displaying children's books about gender identity in his office, with a forceful dissent warning the ruling gives public schools broad authority to suppress employees' personal expression on controversial issues.

A man who bought a four-pack box of a mixed cocktail at a liquor store, noting that the label said it contained tequila, and discerned that it contained none of that type of liquor, sued under a consumer protection statute and settled for $2,500, is entitled to an award of attorney fees, the Court of Appeal held yesterday, rejecting a judge’s theory that there is no “prevailing party” where a statutory offer of compromise is accepted.