(Subscription required) The retired 2nd District Court of Appeal justice brings nearly three decades of experience as a prosecutor, litigator, mediator and educator to Orange County's oldest law school.

The case is unusual because it does not involve the appeal of any legal matters decided by a lower court. Instead, the state public defenders who represent condemned inmates and several civil rights groups are asking the justices simply to overturn the state’s death penalty law, which they say is illegal because it is applied more heavily to defendants who are Black or Latino than to whites.

The building at 350 W. First Street in the Los Angeles Civic Center will today be named the Felicitas and Gonzalo Mendez United States Courthouse in honor of the parents of an 8-year-old girl on whose behalf they successfully challenged the establishment of “Mexican schools” in Orange County.

The Court of Appeal for this district has held that a judge did not err in denying a special motion to strike in an action for malicious prosecution where, in the underlying lawsuit, a Century City attorney and his law firm continued to represent a man who was suing for declaratory relief predicated on a breach of contract even though their client had admitted in a criminal proceeding that he had forged the signature of the other purported party.