Federal Judiciary

Diaz v. LA County MTA (Cal. Ct. App. - July 23, 2009)

By Shaun Martin

On Monday afternoon, Justice Perluss published this opinion, which involved the application of res ipsa loquitor to a common carrier (in particular, an accident between a car and an MTA bus).

On Tuesday morning, I wrote this, in which I noted that while I thought the opinion might be correct as a precedential matter, there were still some doctrinal things about it that bugged me.

On Thursday, the Court of Appeal sua sponte amended its opinion, responding to at least one of the concerns I had (the harmless error/burden of proof point).

And it's a pretty darn good response. One that may well, again, correctly interpret California precedent.

I have some extended thoughts about the amendment as well, but they're a bit too involved for a blog post. Or at least an early Friday morning post. So I'll leave 'em for extended discussion at some later point.

For now, it's more than sufficient to say: Well done. Quite.

Full post as published by California Appellate Report on July 24, 2009 (boomark / email).