It’s no surprise that tomorrow will be a heavy Supreme Court filing day. The court will file its opinions in Nationwide Biweekly Administration, Inc. v. Superior Court, People v. Guerrero, and People v. Lopez. (Briefs here; oral argument videos here.)
The court granted review in the Nationwide case in September 2018. The parties and the court subsequently narrowed the issues, which are whether there is a right to a jury trial in a civil action brought by the People, acting through representative governmental agencies, pursuant to the Unfair Competition Law (Bus. & Prof. Code, § 17200 et seq.) or the False Advertising Law (Bus. & Prof. Code, § 17500 et seq.), because the People seek statutory penalties, among other forms of relief.
In Guerrero, the court will decide whether the Court of Appeal properly applied the “some connection or relationship” test of People v. Gonzales (2018) 6 Cal.5th 44 [see here] in holding that defendant’s conviction for identity theft precluded reducing his forgery conviction to a misdemeanor under the provisions of Proposition 47? The court granted review in March 2019.
The questions in Lopez, another Proposition 47 case, are: (1) Can the prosecution charge theft and shoplifting of the same property, notwithstanding Penal Code section 459.5, subdivision (b), which provides that “Any act of shoplifting as defined in subdivision (a) shall be charged as shoplifting. No person who is charged with shoplifting may also be charged with burglary or theft of the same property”? (2) If not, did trial counsel provide constitutionally ineffective assistance by failing to object to the theft charge? The court granted review in November 2018. It later asked for supplemental briefing on 10 different questions.
The opinions can be viewed tomorrow starting at 10:00 a.m.
