For the second week in a row, there were no straight grants at yesterday’s Supreme Court conference, but there were actions of note.
Pot zoning depublication. The court denied review in JCCrandall, LLC v. County of Santa Barbara, but it depublished the Second District, Division Six, Court of Appeal opinion that overturned a county’s grant of a conditional use permit to cultivate cannabis. Despite what the appellate court, with pun in hand, called “high expectations that cannabis is legal in California” based on state statutory law, the opinion said a neighboring landowner’s objection to the permit was proper “because under federal law cannabis is illegal in California and everywhere else in the United States.” Division Six also concluded that, because the objector was claiming the permit would violate a fundamental vested right (access to the property of the company seeking the permit is solely by an easement over the objector’s property), the superior court had employed too lax a standard of review.
Criminal procedure standing grant-and-hold. Superior Court v. Superior Court is a grant-and-hold for Raju v. Superior Court. (You don’t see many case titles like that. It’s Kern County’s superior court seeking writ relief from a ruling by Solano County’s superior court.) Raju is expected to decide, “(1) Does a taxpayer have standing to pursue a civil action against a superior court based on its alleged failure to expedite and prioritize criminal cases? (2) If so, may such an action be based on Penal Code section 1049.5 or 1050?” The superior courts’ writ petition concerns an underlying lawsuit by the UFW Foundation and a few individuals challenging Kern County’s misdemeanor-arraignment and probation practices. The Fifth District summarily denied the Kern County Superior Court’s writ petition.
998 costs grant-and-hold. Zavala v. Hyundai Motor America is a grant-and-hold for Gorobets v. Jaguar Land Rover North America (see here), which is expected to decide, “Is a settlement offer under Code of Civil Procedure section 998 that contains two options inherently invalid, presumptively invalid, or invalid or partially or entirely valid depending on a separate and independent evaluation of each option?” The Fourth District, Division One, published opinion in Zavala reversed an award to the plaintiff of over $275,000 in attorney fees and costs because the superior court should have “separately consider[ed] the validity of . . . two separate [defense section 998] offers and therefore improperly concluded that the offer to compromise, as a whole, was invalid due to the lack of specificity of one of the options.” Division One disagreed with the Second District, Division Two, Gorobets conclusion that simultaneous offers are generally invalid.
Three Strikes dissenting votes in possible future Racial Justice Act case.
Justices Joshua Groban and Kelli Evans recorded dissenting votes from the denial of review in In re Green, after the First District, Division Four, in an unpublished opinion, denied a habeas corpus petition. The 53-page opinion came after the Supreme Court issued an order to show cause before Division Four “why petitioner is not entitled to relief based on his claim that his 35 years to life sentence under California’s Three Strikes Law is disproportionate to his culpability and constitutes cruel or unusual punishment under the California Constitution, Article [I, section] 17, and People v. Avila (2020) 57 Cal.App.5th 1134.” (See here.) The sentence followed the defendant’s conviction of second degree robbery for snatching a 78-year-old’s purse.
In Avila, the Second District, Division Three, found to be cruel or unusual a sentence of 25 years to life plus 14 years for attempted robbery and attempted extortion. (There was no petition for review in Avila.) The Division Four Green decision said, “Although we grant that there are some superficial similarities to Avila, in the end we find the distinctions between the two cases to be more notable than the similarities.”
The authoring justice also filed a 3-page concurrence. Among other things, the justice finds to be the defendant’s “most troubling” argument one that “suggests . . . Green may have a claim under the Racial Justice Act [here and here].” The concurrence summarizes the allegations: “life sentences where robbery is the Third Strike are no longer imposed with anywhere near the frequency they once were; and—here is the kicker—those who were subject to such sentences when robbery was well-accepted as a Third Strike are mostly African American men, like Green.”
Dissenting vote in case criticizing form jury instruction. Justice Groban also recorded a dissenting vote when the court denied review in People v. Lattin. The Fourth District, Division One, partially published opinion affirmed a conviction for assault with a firearm. The opinion’s published portion disagreed with a Judicial Council model instruction, specifically an instruction’s use notes stating that a “gun must be loaded unless used as [a] club or bludgeon” for there to be an assault. Instead of that blanket rule, Division One said, “If ammunition is readily available—and here there was sufficient evidence it was—it is a question for the jury whether a defendant with an unloaded gun possesses the means to load the gun and shoot immediately, or whether he is too many steps away from inflicting injury to have the present ability to commit assault.”
Racial Justice Act denial. The court denied review and a depublication request in People v. Quintero, after a First District, Division Five, partially published opinion rejected arguments “that the prosecution’s use of the race-neutral terms ‘monsters’ and ‘predators’ in closing argument” violated the Racial Justice Act (here and here). The appellate court relied on evidence that “the defendants found the victim in an inebriated state, alone in the street in the middle of the night; took her into their car; drove her 50 miles away; and committed multiple sex crimes in concert against her.” “Nothing in the record suggests the terms were used to explicitly or implicitly appeal to racial bias,” the opinion said.
Criminal case grant-and-holds. There were five criminal case grant-and-holds: one waiting for the finality of the opinion, earlier this month, in People v. Patton (see here); one more on hold for In re Hernandez (see here); and another holding for People v. Rhodius (see here), which will be argued next month.
