Div. Seven of this district’s Court of Appeal has held that Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Holly J. Fujie did not err in denying a defendant’s request for a continuance after his attorney withdrew during the second day of a bench trial, finding that the fact that the lawyer’s request was predicated on ethical concerns over presenting the defense and the client had intermittently represented himself in the case, as well as other factors, supported the decision.

A judge’s instruction that allowed jurors to find two defendants guilty on two counts of each of attempted murder under the legislatively abandoned “natural and probable consequences” theory has resulted in the Court of Appeal’s reversal of those convictions, over a dissent, but the justices were unanimous in affirming murder convictions, finding the instructional error to have been harmless under the circumstances.

(Subscription required) A new report found that LLM providers including Open AI, Perplexity AI and others are susceptible to security breaches, putting law firms using gen AI at risk.

(Subscription required) A Georgia state court ruled in OpenAI's favor in what may be the first-ever generative artificial intelligence defamation suit after a radio talk show host accused OpenAI's chatbot product, ChatGPT, of inaccurately stating he was sued for embezzlement.