As California stares down a massive budget deficit, the mayors of the Bay Area’s largest cities are urging Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers to avoid cuts to homelessness services and dedicate $1 billion a year to helping local governments manage the crisis.

Div. Three of the Fourth District Court of Appeal has held that former clients cannot recover, under a “tort of another” theory, attorney fees they incurred in defending against an action by lawyers who previously represented them and sued for their share of a settlement.

(Subscription required) "A criminal judge can't just rely on 25 years of experience and kind of [say] 'I got it,'" he said. "It's requiring us to really delve into what exactly do they want us to do. It's a new area of law, really, so it's causing us to have to spend a ton of time researching this stuff and trying to figure it out."

(Subscription required) Sacramento County Bar Association President Connor W. Olson began the organization’s 2024 Bench Bar Reception by noting that for the first time, the leaders of all three local courts were women. When she stepped up to the podium later in the evening, U.S. Eastern District of California Chief Judge Kimberly J. Mueller said that moment was decades in the making.