The first conference of 2025, a double one, was a busy one. This is the first of a two-part summary of some of the highlights. The second part probably won’t appear until Friday.
Racial Justice Act dissents. See: Another Racial Justice Act dissenting statement.
Civil commitment percolation. See: Separate statement in civil commitment review denial.
Murder resentencing. Taking yet another case involving Senate Bill 1437, legislation that limited criminal liability for felony murder and eliminated it for murder under the natural-and-probable-consequences doctrine, the court granted review in People v. Lopez. It limited the issue to: “Does Penal Code section 1172.6, subdivision (a)(3), which requires defendants to allege that they ‘could not presently be convicted of murder or attempted murder because of changes to section 188 or 189 made effective January 1, 2019,’ render ineligible for relief petitioners who could have raised their challenges to imputed malice on prior direct appeal?” The unpublished Fifth District Court of Appeal opinion said “yes.”
Section 998 offers. The court also agreed to review the Second District, Division Two, 2-1 published opinion in Gorobets v. Jaguar Land Rover North America. Division Two framed threshold issues this way: “(1) Is a [Code of Civil Procedure section] 998 offer sufficiently certain if it consists of two offers made at the same time to the same party and leaves it to the offeree which offer to accept; and (2) Is a 998 offer sufficiently certain if it promises to pay the offeree for the categories of damages to which the offeree is statutorily entitled (plus some categories to which it is not), agrees to immediately pay any undisputed amounts for those categories, and shunts any disputed amounts to a third-party mechanism for resolution?” It answered “no” to both questions. However, the opinion also held that only one of the two offers “was itself invalid” and that rejection of the valid offer operated to limit the offeree’s pre-offer costs and attorney fees and to award the offeror post-offer costs. Thus, the appellate court also answered “no” to the question, “When an offeree makes two simultaneous offers, one of which is invalid and the other valid, is that really simultaneous offers that render the independently valid offer ineffective?” The dissent asserted that the analysis should have ended with the conclusion that the “simultaneous offers . . . were ineffective under section 998.” The Supreme Court heard argument in another section 998 case — Madrigal v. Hyundai Motor America — just last week.
[January 17 update: Here is the issue as summarized by court staff (see here) — “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?”]
