Recently, California legislators passed SB 954 creating a new pre-mediation requirement – the prospective Mediation Disclosure. "As soon as reasonably possible" before agreeing to mediate, attorneys are to present to clients a Mediation Disclosure affirmatively explaining mediation's confidentiality restrictions, execution of which acknowledges the client's understanding of the restriction's impact ...
California has enacted a sweeping tough new privacy law ...
September 29, 2021 By: Jennifer Guerrero The California Privacy Rights Act of 2020 (“CPRA”) established a new state privacy regulatory agency, the California Privacy Protection Agency (“Agency”), which is responsible for issuing regulations implementing the CPRA (along with enforcement authority) ...
Article PDFJust when businesses thought they had figured out their Proposition 65 compliance strategies, the State of California, through the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA), has proposed a substantial change that will drastically limit the use of the short-form safe harbor warning first authorized in 2018 ...
At its Voting Meeting today the Commission adopted a new standard offer contract available to any Qualifying Facility (QF) of 20 megawatts or less seeking to sell electricity to a Commission-jurisdictional utility pursuant to the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 (PURPA). Under PURPA, Commission-jurisdictional utilities must provide QFs the option of executing any existing PURPA contract for which they qualify ...
Key Points Employees again are entitled to up to 80 hours of employer-paid sick leave for COVID-related absences through September 30, 2022, retroactive from January 1, 2022 Vaccine related absences are now covered absences for entitlement to paid sick leave In certain instances, employers may require employees to provide documentation of COVID test results for themselves or family members in order to receive the paid sick leave On February 9, 2022, Governor Newsom signed Senat
SB 977 was passed by the California Senate on June 26, 2020. If the bill is passed by the Assembly and becomes law, it will require health care systems, private equity groups, hedge funds, and academic medical centers to obtain advance approval by the California Attorney General for substantially all acquisitions or change of control transactions with health care facilities and providers ...
On September 30, 2021, Governor Gavin Newsom approved and signed SB 2 and SB 16.1 SB 2 created a decertification procedure for peace officers and removal/denial of qualified immunity for claims or actions brought under Tom Bane Civil Rights Act (Civil Code section 52.1). SB 16 impacts retention of peace officer employment records and access to employment records ...
Key Points A recent order from the Santa Clara County Superior Court suggests that California courts intend to uphold and implement SB 35's goals of fast-tracking housing developments that meet established, objective criteria. California courts will closely scrutinize the objective planning standards cities and local governments utilize in determining whether a project is compliant with local land use criteria and building codes ...
On August 11, 2022, the California Supreme Court issued its opinion in Zolly v. City of Oakland, holding that a group of property owners had pleaded sufficient facts to maintain a challenge to the City’s solid-waste franchise fee, under Article XIII C of the California Constitution, commonly called “Proposition 26 ...
On March 2, 2017, the California Supreme Court determined that when a public employee uses a personal account to communicate about the conduct of public business, the communications are subject to disclosure under the California Public Records Act (CPRA), if those communications are not otherwise exempt from disclosure. In a unanimous opinion, the Court in City of San Jose v ...
On August 3, 2020, the California Supreme Court issued its highly anticipated decision in Ixchel Pharma, LLC v. Biogen, Inc., clarifying the bounds of legitimate competition under California tort and antitrust law. The Court’s ruling generally came down in favor of encouraging competition, reducing claims for tortious interference with contract, and decreasing the risk of litigation arising from normal competitive activity ...
On December 22, 2016, in Augustus v. ABM Security Services, Inc., Case No. S224853, the California Supreme Court issued a split decision on rest periods. In a decision in which four justices concurred, and two concurred and dissented, in part, the Court held that employers “must relieve their employees of all duties and relinquish any control over how employees spend their break time ...
In Union of Medical Marijuana Patients v. City of San Diego, the California Supreme Court unanimously held that the City of San Diego failed to analyze the potential environmental impacts of its medical marijuana dispensary law. While the main issue in this case was the definition of a project under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), the ruling has important ramifications for the legal cannabis market as a whole ...
California employers should assess their meal period policies and practices in light of the California Supreme Court's February 25, 2021, decision in Donohue v. AMN Services, LLC (Donohue). This ruling: (1) prohibits California employers from rounding time punches for meal periods and (2) holds that time records showing non-compliant meal periods will raise a rebuttable presumption of liability for meal period violations ...
Yesterday, the California Supreme Court issued an important decision for employers that rejects the application of the federal de minimis defense to unpaid wage claims arising under California law. In Troester v. Starbucks, Case No. S234969 (July 26, 2018), the Supreme Court held that California law prohibits requiring employees to "routinely work for minutes off the clock without compensation ...
On March 4, 2019, the California Supreme Court ruled in Cal Fire Local 2881 et. al. v. California Public Employees' Retirement System that public retirement system members do not have a vested right to purchase "airtime" – nonqualified service credit unrelated to public service ...
In the recent case of 'Ixchel Pharma v. Biogen', the Ninth Circuit asked the California Supreme Court to resolve two questions “because of their significance for business torts in California.” The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit—which includes California—occasionally encounters questions of California law that it cannot resolve ...
Key Points The California Supreme Court clarified the so-called California Rule on public employee’s "vested rights" to pension benefits, holding that detrimental financial changes to employee pension benefits do not invariably require that offsetting comparable new advantages be provided. And it set a legal framework for analyzing that issue ...
July 21, 2023 By: Robert S. Cooper The Adolph v. Uber Ruling Thwarts The U.S. Supreme Court’s Landmark Viking Decision In a widely anticipated but unsurprising ruling, the California Supreme Court on July 17, 2023 issued its decision in Adolph v. Uber Technologies, Inc., (S274671) weighing in on the United States Supreme Court’s (“SCOTUS”) recent landmark decision in Viking River Cruises, Inc. v. Moriana, (2022) 596 U.S. __, [142 S. Ct 1906] (Viking) ...
On October 6, 2021, Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 45 (AB 45) into law. AB 45 permits the manufacture and sale of a wide range of products containing regulated amounts of industrial hemp. Below is a brief overview: What is industrial hemp? “Industrial hemp” is defined as cannabis plants that have no more than 0.3% tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) ...
February 16, 2023 By: Kathryn B. Fox and Charles Whitman Once again, California employers can require workers to sign arbitration agreements as a condition of employment. Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Viking River Cruises v. Moriana and in a reversal of its own prior decision, a divided three-judge Ninth Circuit panel found that AB 51 is preempted by federal law. Chamber of Commerce of the U.S., et al. v. Bonta, et al., No. 20-15291 (9th Cir. Feb. 15, 2023) ...
In Harris v. University Village Thousand Oaks, CCRC, LLC, plaintiffs, residents at Defendant’s continuing care retirement community who had previously signed binding arbitration agreements in their continuing care contracts, argued that under applicable California law, the arbitration agreements were invalid and they could therefore litigate their claims in a court of law. Defendant University Village sought to enforce the arbitration provisions of the continuing care contracts ...
On October 13, 2021, through the website of the Ministry of Mining, the Government of Chile published the National and International Call for Lithium. National or foreign companies may participate in this process, which will have to acquire the respective public tender conditions, to allow exploration, exploitation, and commercialization of a total of 400,000 tons of marketable metallic lithium, divided into 5 quotas of 80,000 tons each ...
