There were two straight grants at Tuesday’s day-early Supreme Court conference. (Actually, one is not strictly a straight grant, but it is a straight grant equivalent.) Both were in civil cases, so the court has still not granted review in a criminal case since July 29.
It was a big double conference — there were 187 rulings.
It was yet another short-handed conference, with just six justices participating, because Governor Newsom — now with only 53 days left until he is out of office — has left unfilled a more-than-12–month-long vacancy on the court.
Case accepted: insurance ratemaking
Supreme Court takes Ninth Circuit insurance rates case.
Review granted: case law conflict about sanctions motions
The court will hear Ari Law P.C. v. Autonation.com, Inc. In a published opinion, the First District, Division Four, Court of Appeal, affirmed a $29,000 sanctions award, disagreeing with two other appellate decisions about how strictly the moving party must strictly comply with a safe harbor requirement that gives the opposing party a chance to escape sanctions.
Code of Civil Procedure section 128.7(c)(1) requires a sanctions motion to be served on the allegedly offending party at least 21 days before the motion is filed in court, giving the party the interim time to cure the alleged offense. Division Four said it was OK for the served motion and the subsequently filed motion to state different hearing dates. Section 128.7 “require[s] strict compliance,” the appellate court said, but “not the notice provision of section 1010.” Section 1010 provides generally that a motion “must state when . . . it will be made.”
Division Four disagreed with the Second District, Division Four, opinion in Galleria Plus, Inc. v. Hanmi Bank (2009) 179 Cal.App.4th 535 and the Second District, Division Five, decision in J.N. v. Goldberg (2026) 120 Cal.App.5th 544. There was no petition for review in Galleria Plus or J.N.
[November 13 update: The issues as summarized by court staff (see here) are: “(1) If a party serves an opposing party with a motion for sanctions under Code of Civil Procedure sections 128.5 or 128.7 that identifies a hearing date different from the date identified in the motion subsequently filed with the court, is the motion for sanctions still effective? (2) If not, can the defect be waived or found harmless?”]
Another forum selection grant-and-hold
ANT Insurance Ltd. v. Superior Court is another grant-and-hold for Lathrop v. Thor Motor (see here), an un-hold case in which the parties were directed to brief these issues: “(1) Where a party alleges that enforcement of a forum selection clause would result in a waiver of the party’s unwaivable statutory rights, what is the showing necessary to enforce (or avoid enforcement) of such a clause, and which party bears the burden of proof on the issue? (2) Under what circumstances, if any, does a stipulation to apply California law in the selected forum rebut an allegation that enforcement of a forum selection clause would result in a waiver of a party’s unwaivable statutory rights? (3) If enforcement of a choice of law clause would result in a waiver of a party’s unwaivable statutory rights, is the choice of law clause severable from the remainder of the agreement?”
The Second District, Division Eight, summarily denied the writ petition in ANT Insurance.
Horvitz & Levy is appellate counsel for the defendants in Lathrop and two other Lathrop grant-and-holds. (See here.)
Another DMV hearing grant-and-hold
Amini v. Department of Motor Vehicles is another grant-and-hold for Romane v. Department of Motor Vehicles (see here), in which the court limited the issue to, “Under what circumstances does an administrative per se [APS] hearing officer’s relationship with the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) violate a driver’s due process right to an impartial adjudicator by creating an unacceptable risk of bias during a DMV driver’s license suspension hearing?”
In Amini, the Fourth District, Division One, unpublished opinion followed its earlier Romane decision and declined to find that “a hearing officer’s identification of standard documents to be admitted into evidence amounts to prohibited advocacy.”
OSC: free duplicate transcript for habeas petitioner
The court issued an order to show cause, returnable in the superior court, in the pro per’s habeas corpus petition in In re Ramos.
Cause is to be shown “why petitioner is not entitled to a free copy of the trial transcripts in preparation of filing a petition for writ of habeas corpus, and why such records should not be provided directly to petitioner, in light of appellate counsel’s failure to return the previously obtained transcripts to petitioner and appellate counsel’s disbarment in 2025. (Cf. Gardner v. California (1969) 393 U.S. 367; Cal. Rules of Professional Conduct, rule 1.16, subd. (e)(1).)”
Bail grant-and-transfer
The court granted review in Moore v. Superior Court and sent the case back to the Fourth District, Division Three, for a decision on the merits after the appellate court summarily denied a writ petition. The case concerns application of the Supreme Court’s landmark bail opinions in In re Humphrey (2021) 11 Cal.5th 135 (see here) and In re Kowalczyk (2026) 19 Cal.5th 593 (see here).
The petition for review challenges the setting of $150,000 bail, an amount claimed to be “completely insurmountable” for the defendant, who is charged with stealing copper from elderly persons’ homes. The petition raises several issues, including whether “setting schedule bail” is unconstitutional, whether a defendant needs to “request[ ] bail money from friends and family or nonprofits such as the Bail Project or the National Bail Fund Network or a bail bondsman,” and whether Humphrey “requires a court articulate its analysis of flight risk and dangerousness of a defendant and why nonmonetary conditions do not suffice.”
Palma writ: attorney eligibility to practice law
After issuing a Palma notice in Rifat v. State Bar of California (see here), the court granted a writ petition in part, ruling the State Bar erroneously designated an attorney — who had been disciplined for insurance fraud — as “[n]ot eligible to practice law in CA” based on the Bar’s conclusion he paid restitution too late and completed probation conditions too early.
The court concluded the restitution payment was not in default because the State Bar Court’s Review Department had set a payment deadline that hasn’t expired yet. It also found that, although the attorney’s compliance with some probation conditions was premature as occurring before his discipline became effective, “the State Bar’s suggestion that he must repeat those probation conditions approximately one year later is unreasonable under the circumstances here.”
Remand: attorney discipline complaint time limitation
Each Supreme Court conference typically includes several “accusations” against California attorneys, accusations not made by the State Bar. They are almost always denied. But the court remanded to the State Bar the accusation filed by Martina Silas, directing “the State Bar Office of Chief Trial Counsel to reopen and reconsider the complaint brought by Martina Silas against James Arden . . . in light of rules 5.21(A) and (C) of the Rules of Procedure of the State Bar and the standards for further action by the State Bar as set forth in rules 2401 and 2604 of the Rules of Procedure of the State Bar.” (Link added.)
According to the accusation, and based on the court’s citation of rule 5.21, it appears that the State Bar found the accusation untimely and the court wants the Bar to reevaluate that finding.
Two commutations and a pardon recommended
With Governor Newsom’s watershed commutation of all California death sentences pending review (here and here), the court granted Newsom’s requests — made in September — for the constitutionally required recommendations that allow him to commute the sentences of Vertis Bayne and Jesus Espinosa and to pardon Reddy Rajesh.
The Governor’s requests for those three clemencies stated:
“In 2004, Mr. Bayne was convicted of attempted murder. He was sentenced to a prison term of 60 years to life. Mr. Bayne has prior felony convictions for distribution of a controlled substance (1999), robbery (2000), and possession of a firearm (2003).”
“In 2013, Mr. Espinosa was convicted of attempted murder. He was sentenced to a prison term of 30 years. In 2006, Mr. Espinosa sustained a prior felony conviction for assault with a deadly weapon.”
“In 1994, Mr. Rajesh was convicted of sale of a controlled substance. In 1998, Mr. Rajesh was convicted of possession of a controlled substance for sale.”
The Governor said he is “contemplating” that the commutation for Espinosa, who is currently eligible for release in June 2028, would make him “eligible for earlier release.” For Bayne, however, Newsom’s contemplation is only that the commutation would make him “eligible for an earlier parole suitability hearing.” (Related: “Newsom grants clemency, but freedom isn’t certain”.)
Newsom has a nearly perfect clemency record: he withdrew one request before a ruling, but the court — applying a deferential standard (see here and here) — has approved all 120 of his other requests. (Not counting the death penalty commutations and four individual requests that are still pending.) That’s better than former Governor Jerry Brown, who had the court without explanation block 10 intended clemency grants. The denial of a request implies that a clemency grant would be an abuse of power.
Grant-and-transfer: dependency mootness
The court granted review in In re A.S. and sent the case back to the Third District with directions to reconsider its unpublished opinion in light of the dependency-mootness decision in In re S.R. (2025) 18 Cal.5th 1042 (see here), Penal Code section 11169(a), and Evidence Code section 459(d).
But the A.S. opinion already discussed S.R. and sections 11169 and 459. It did so in dismissing as moot an appeal challenging dependency court findings that the appellant father claimed could be reportable in the Child Abuse Central Index despite the juvenile court’s termination of dependency jurisdiction as to his children. The Third District said, “We are . . . not persuaded that father has been or will be reported to the CACI.”
It’s possible that, after the opinion’s filing, the father has been reported. Father filed in the Supreme Court a motion for judicial notice and the court asked for an answer to the petition for review that addressed not only the petition, but also the judicial notice motion. Maybe the motion established the actual reporting.
Dissenting vote: choice of laws on noncompete covenant
The court denied review in CBD Franchising, Inc. v. One Day Doors & Closets, Inc., but Justice Groban recorded a vote to hear the case. The Second District, Division Two, in an unpublished opinion, refused to enforce a franchise agreement’s designation of New Jersey law to govern a noncompete covenant in the agreement, law that would have enforced the covenant.
Division Two held, “applying New Jersey law to the dispute at hand would be contrary to California’s fundamental policy favoring an individual’s right to engage in his chosen trade.”
Dissenting votes: youth offender parole denial
Justices Liu and Evans recorded dissenting votes from the denial of review in People v. Prince. The Second District, Division Seven, unpublished opinion rejected constitutional challenges to a statute that prevents parole hearings for defendants serving life without parole sentences for special circumstances murders committed when older than 17 and younger than 26. The defendant was convicted of first degree murder, committed when he was 21.
In People v. Hardin (2024) 15 Cal.5th 834, the Supreme Court found unavailing an equal protection attack. (See here.) Justices Liu and Evans dissented there. After Hardin, they have been regularly dissenting from review denials in cases involving attacks on the no-parole-for-youth-offender-LWOPs statute, including once with a separate statement asserting that cruel-or-unusual-punishment issues should be addressed. (See here and recently here; see also here.)
Criminal case grant-and-holds
There were nine criminal case grant-and-holds: one more waiting for a decision in People v. Meno (see here and here), which was argued on September 9, but not submitted until October 21 because of post-argument briefing; five more holding for People v. Eaton (see here), which was argued earlier this month; one more waiting for People v. Munoz (see here, here, and here); one more on hold for People v. Luu (see here), which was argued in October; and one more waiting for People v. Mares (see here).
