Appellate Law

"From Pen-and-Paper Man to Internet Guru"

By Kimberly A. Kralowec

Yesterday's Daily Journal had an article (subscription) about First District Court of Appeal Justice James A. Richman, including some interesting comments about his recent Demps decision, in which the First District overruled Biljac:

Richman's flair for prose has come through in a number of the opinions he has written for the appellate court so far.

In one, Richman began by paraphrasing 18th century poet Alexander Pope, saying that a court "should never be ashamed to own (it) has been in the wrong; which is but saying, in other words, that (it) is wiser today than (it) was yesterday." Demps v. San Francisco Housing Authority, 149 Ca.App.4th 564 (2007).

Richman said his colleagues were wrong back in 1990, when they said trial judges didn't have to rule on every evidentiary objection [when ruling on a summary judgment motion]. Biljac Associates v. First Interstate Bank, 218 Cal.App.3d 1410 (1990).

For proof of his position, Richman pointed to two California Supreme Court cases and every other published Court of Appeal opinion after Biljac.

"I said, look, we've got to go this way," Richman said. "I never followed it as a trial judge. I felt it had been implicitly overruled by the Supreme Court. I didn't have any problem doing it."

Full post as published by The Appellate Practitioner on October 25, 2007 (boomark / email).