In addition to denying review in a case challenging the state’s assisted suicide law, the Supreme Court at today’s Wednesday conference took several actions of note, including:
- The court granted review in Kaanaana v. Barrett Business Services, and limited the issue to this: “Whether the phrase ‘work done for irrigation, utility, reclamation, and improvement districts, and other districts of this type’ in Labor Code section 1720, subdivision (a)(2) of California’s Prevailing Wage Law (Labor Code §§1720 et. seq.) should be interpreted to cover any type of work regardless of its nature, funding, purpose or function, including belt sorting at recycling facilities.” The Ninth Circuit has asked for the court’s help in two other prevailing-wage cases; the court has already agreed to assist in one and will likely soon do the same in the other. In Kaanaana, a divided Second District, Division Eight, Court of Appeal published opinion held the plaintiffs were covered by the prevailing wage law because they “were engaged in ‘public work’ within the meaning of the Labor Code.”
- The court also granted review in Hart v. Keenan Properties, Inc., where the First District, Division Five, in a 2-1 published opinion, reversed a $1.6 million judgment in favor of a mesothelioma sufferer. The majority concluded the only evidence of the defendant having supplied an asbestos-containing product that allegedly caused the disease was based on inadmissible hearsay.
- The court apparently will be weighing in again on a Sanchez issue. (See also here and here.) In a death penalty appeal — People v. Mendez — the court has asked for supplemental briefing about “whether the trial court erred by allowing the People’s gang expert to testify about Mendez’s alleged prior contacts with police.”
- The court granted review and transferred People v. Perez after the Second District dismissed the defendant’s appeal. The appellate court has been directed to “determine whether the trial court made a final order on an appealable issue related to defendant’s petition to recall the sentence (Pen. Code, § 1170, subd. (d)(2)).”
- In In re Seller, a habeas corpus proceeding, the court issued an order to show cause returnable in the Court of Appeal. The case concerns application of the rule the court stated in 2017 that a natural and probable consequences theory cannot support a first degree murder conviction for aiding and abetting a homicide committed by someone else.
- There was one criminal case grant-and-hold.
