On January 23, 2023, a Ninth Circuit panel issued a 2-1 decision reversing a lower court’s dismissal of a serial ADA litigant’s complaint against a lobster shop in a shopping complex. The shopping complex had assigned the owner of the lobster shop a space in the parking lot, and the shop owner had placed a “Lobster Shop Parking Sign” near that space. Plaintiff Chris Langer filed a lawsuit based on the lack of accessible parking for the lobster shop.

Private ADA plaintiffs are limited to seeking injunctive relief and costs under Title III of the ADA, so a plaintiff must show a ...

On January 13, 2023, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Shelleyanne Chang ruled that implementation of the Fast Food Accountability and Standards Recovery Act (“FAST Act”) should remain on hold pending the Secretary of State’s quality control process to review petition signatures.  In so doing, the Court held that “[c]ase law is clear that a qualified referendum pending vote by the people in a general election suspends the effectiveness of a law before it takes effect” and noted that there was no authority to support the Department of Industrial Relation’s position that ...

Q: I represent a party in a receivership case. While the receiver has been in place for over 3 months, she has not served the parties or creditors with any reports. I have written the receiver requesting reports, but she has ignored my requests. What should I do? Can the receiver be sanctioned?

A: Rules of Court 3.1182(a) requires a receiver to provide monthly reports to the parties. It says: must. The receiver is not required to provide reports to creditors, unless the creditor is a lien holder and requests the reports. If the receiver is not complying with the rule, there are a number of ...

Losses arising from email scams are usually covered, if at all, under a company’s crime policy. But a recent decision from The District Court in Minnesota suggests that recourse may also be found under an insured’s cyber or business interruption coverage. Importantly, the decision suggests that a “data breach” triggering cyber coverage may occur where a bad actor infiltrates and manipulates an insured’s email system.

In Fishbowl Sols., Inc. v. Hanover Ins. Co., 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 200210 (D. Minn. Nov. 3, 2022), a bad actor gained unauthorized access to the email ...

California retail businesses must prepare to open employee-only restrooms to members of the public to accommodate medical conditions including Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, other inflammatory bowel disease, and irritable bowel syndrome.

On September 30, 2022, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1632 into law. This bill requires a place of business that is open to the general public for the sale of goods and that has a toilet facility for its employees to allow any individual who is lawfully on the premises of that place of business to use that toilet ...

Effective January 1, 2023, AB 2068 provides that employers posting a Cal/OSHA citation, special order or action must post the Cal/OSHA English version of the notice, along with multiple language versions of the notification that Cal/OSHA will have prepared, as applicable to the workplace. 

Cal/OSHA is required to prepare these notifications in English and the top seven non-English languages used by limited-English-proficient adults in California, as determined by the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Census, which are currently Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin ...

On December 30, 2022, Judge Shelleyanne Chang of the Superior Court of Sacramento issued a temporary restraining order to block adoption of the FAST Act, which was due to take effect on January 1. 

The Save Local Restaurants coalition of restaurant industry advocates filed a voter referendum on September 7, 2022 to block the new law, and appear to have gathered enough signatures to put the law on the November 2024 ballot. Despite the referendum, the California Department of Industrial Relations stated on December 27 that it would move forward with implementation of the FAST Act on ...

Beginning July 1, 2023, SB 731 will provide for the automatic sealing of certain felony criminal records.  Arrests that do not result in conviction will also be sealed. This law also permits individuals with violent or serious felony records to petition courts to order their criminal records sealed.  Sealing of these records will make them unavailable to most employers through a background search, although school districts may still access these records for teacher credentialing or employment decisions.

Under SB 731, most defendants convicted of a felony are eligible to have their ...

Faced with the expiration of its COVID-19 Emergency Temporary Standards, Cal/OSHA voted to establish non-emergency standards. Once approved by the Office of Administrative Law, which is expected to take place in January of 2023, the new standards will remain in place for two years and will apply to most workers in California who are not covered by the Aerosol Transmissible Diseases standard. 

The regulations continue several key ETS requirements, including complying with California Department of Public Health rules regarding face coverings, and providing respirators to ...

In response to recent Supreme Court decisions and laws in other states outlawing abortion, California passed a number of new laws designed to protect reproductive rights in the state. These include bills to prohibit a person from being criminally or civilly liable for a pregnancy loss, to prohibit a health care provider from releasing medical information on abortion care in response to out-of-state subpoenas, and to prohibit law enforcement cooperation with out-of-state entities related to a lawful abortion. California voters also approved Proposition 1 in November, which ...