Case Updates

Summary: In In Jones v. Machado-Powell, 2018 WL 4925214 (9th Cir. BAP 2018), the Bankruptcy Appellate Panel held, in an unpublished opinion, that Appellees had not violated the automatic stay when they removed and sold debtor’s personal property and then listed the real property for sale as debtor had neither an ownership interest, nor a possessory interest in said real property, when debtor filed for chapter 13 bankruptcy relief. Read more

Summary: The California Court of Appeal reversed the trial court’s judgment and held that the Uniform Voidable Transactions Act (Cal. Civ. Code. § 3439 et seq., formerly known as the Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act, or UFTA) can apply to a premarital agreement in which the prospective spouses agree that upon marriage each spouse’s earnings, income, and other property acquired during marriage will be that spouse’s separate property. Robert Sturm v. Todd Andrew Moyer et al., No. B284553 (Cal. Ct. App. Feb. 15, 2019). The Court held that the application of the UFTA to a premarital agreement depends on whether there was actual or constructive fraud under Civil Code section 3439.04, and remanded to the trial court to make that determination. Read more

Monty A. McIntyre, Esq. is the publisher of California Case Summaries™. Monty has been a California civil trial lawyer since 1980, a member of ABOTA since 1995, and currently works as a full-time mediator, arbitrator and referee with ADR Services, Inc. (ADR) in ADR’s offices in San Diego, Irvine, and Los Angeles. California Case Summaries™provides short summaries, organized by legal topic, of every new published civil and family law case so California lawyers can easily and affordably keep up with the new case law in their practice areas. Monthly, quarterly and annual subscriptions are available. Read more

Assembly Bill 5 (Worker Status: employees and independent contractors) (“AB 5”) is the proposed codification of the ABC Test for the California Labor Code and California Unemployment Insurance Code based on the California Supreme Court decision of Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v. Superior Court of Los Angeles, 4 Cal.5th 903 (2018). AB 5 replaces the current common law analysis under S. G. Borello & Sons, Inc. v. Department of Industrial Relations, 48 Cal.3d 341 (1989), for determining the status of a worker as either an employee or independent contractor. Read more

Summary: In Hugger v. Warfield (In re Hugger), 2019 WL 1594017 (9th Cir. BAP Apr. 5, 2019), the U.S. Bankruptcy Appellate Panel of the Ninth Circuit (the “BAP”) affirmed an order denying a chapter 7 debtor’s request that the bankruptcy court vacate his own discharge and dismiss his case because he had filed the case too soon to discharge $40,000 of taxes. Read more

In response to a question from the Ninth Circuit, the California Supreme Court recently held in White v. Square, Inc. that a plaintiff has standing to bring a claim under the Unruh Civil Rights Act when the plaintiff visits a business’s website with the intent of using its services, encounters terms and conditions that allegedly deny full and equal access to its services, and the plaintiff leaves the website without entering into an agreement with the business. Read more

Summary: The California Supreme Court has held that an assignee holding both the senior and junior notes secured by the same parcel of real property may foreclose non-judicially on the senior lien and then recover from the borrower on the junior note. The holding overturns nearly 30 years of precedent. [Black Sky Capital, LLC vs. Cobb, 7 Cal. 5th 156, 439 P.3d 1149 (2019)] Read more

On August 6, 2019, a lawsuit was brought in Superior Court in Los Angeles County seeking (i) a judgment declaring expenditures of taxpayer funds and taxpayer-financed resources to implement SB 826 to be illegal, and (ii) an injunction to halt California’s Secretary of State (Alex Padilla) from expending taxpayer funds and taxpayer-financed resources to implement that law. SB 826 is a California law that went into effect on January 1, 2019 requiring publicly-held corporations--those with outstanding shares listed on a major United States stock exchange--that are incorporated in California or that have their principal executive offices here, to have at least one female director on their board by December 31, 2019. No later than December 31, 2021, such corporations must have at least one female director if their number of directors is four or fewer, at least two female directors if their number of directors is five, and at least three female directors if their number of directors is six or more. Read more

Summary: The Eighth Circuit has held that a guarantor's financial advisor had the implied actual authority to deliver the guarantee to a lender, even though the lender failed to make inquiry concerning the scope of the advisor's authority to act on behalf of the guarantor. [Radiance Capital Receivables Eighteen, LLC vs. Concannon, 920 F.3d 552 (8th Cir. 2019).] Read more

Summary: A bankruptcy court in Florida has held that a trustee asserting an "unreasonably small assets" fraudulent transfer claim must show that the transfer in question was the event that caused the debtor to have unreasonably small assets; if the debtor was already in distress, then the transfer was not the cause of the debtor's financial demise. [In re Palm Beach Finance Partners, LP, 2019 Westlaw 1301899 (Bankr. S.D. Fla.).] Read more