Div. Five of the Court of Appeal for this district held yesterday that a Los Angeles Superior Court judge properly imposed a $9,981 sanction on a Sherman Oaks attorney who, during a deposition via Zoom, declined to turn his webcam on despite the expressed suspicion of the opposing counsel that he was coaching his client, who was on camera, on how to answer.

Div. One of the Fourth District Court of Appeal, in a divided opinion, has held that election officials in San Diego acted arbitrarily in rejecting 98 signatures in support of placing an initiative on the ballot for the November 2024 general election due to slight misspellings, single-letter illegibility, or use of abbreviations not recognized by the postal service on the listed home addresses of supporters, contributing to the disqualification of the measure.

Div. Seven of this district’s Court of Appeal has held that a trial court erred in only handing over to the defense the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of witnesses to potential past misconduct by four law enforcement officers after an in camera review of their personnel records revealed that they contained some material, exculpatory evidence, saying production of the relevant portions of the actual confidential files must be ordered.

More than 200 people who took California’s disastrous February bar exam will go from failing to passing under a new round of grading changes approved on Friday, boosting the test’s overall pass rate from 56% to 63% — nearly double the state's historical average of 35%. The grading change affecting 230 test takers is the State Bar of California’s latest attempt to mitigate the fallout of its February test, which was plagued with technical and logistical problems.