(Subscription required) An appeals court reversed an arbitration order, holding BMW could not enforce a dealership arbitration clause against a consumer's Song-Beverly warranty claims, vacating the arbitration award and judgment, and remanding the case for further trial court proceedings.

We spent much of the past year talking with dozens of people who’ve interacted with CARE Court as participants, petitioners and as employees trying to fulfill the program’s goals. Here’s a sampling of their experiences.

To assess the program, CalMatters requested housing information from California’s 25 largest counties, as well as all of the ones that first launched the program. Of the 2,362 CARE Court petitions filed in those counties, fewer than a third were for people who were homeless. 

The Court of Appeal for this district yesterday upheld the validity of a voter-enacted tax in the City of Santa Barbara on video services, holding that it does not violate a federal statute that bars “discriminatory taxes on electronic commerce.”