• Governor Signs State Bar Licensing Fee Bill, Consumer Arbitration Restrictions

    Law.com
    October 7, 2025

    (Subscription required) The latest signings reflect lawmakers' ongoing frustration with the state bar and Democrats' willingness to enact more consumer-friendly legislation over business groups' opposition.

    Related: Daily Journal, Metropolitan News-Enterprise

  • State Supreme Court visit: Local students to get chance to question justices

    Monterey Herald
    October 7, 2025

    Local students will have the chance to question California Supreme Court members about the state’s judicial system before Wednesday’s special session of the court in Monterey, the first time the court has met in the city in more than 45 years. The special session will be held at Colton Hall Museum – the location of California’s first constitutional convention in 1849.

  • No Special Wording Needed to Overcome Presumption of Bias

    Metropolitan News-Enterprise
    October 7, 2025

    Div. Six of this district’s Court of Appeal yesterday held that a trial judge may overrule an objection asserting that the prosecutor has exercised a peremptory challenge based on a presumptively invalid, racially motivated reason without making explicit findings referencing the governing statutory language, disapproving a 2024 opinion by the same division that reached the opposite conclusion.

  • C.A. Says No Reversible Error Due to Prosecutor Saying in Closing That Facts ‘Broke His Heart’

    Metropolitan News-Enterprise
    October 7, 2025

    A prosecutor’s closing argument, in which he said that the circumstances of the case “broke my heart,” asked the jury to “do justice,” and likened the crime to a “Hollywood slasher movie,” did not mandate reversal of the defendant’s attempted murder conviction relating to a domestic violence incident in which the accused stabbed his then-girlfriend with a broken bottle, Div. Five of this district’s Court of Appeal has held.