Q:      In previous columns you have stated that state court receivers in California have quasi-judicial immunity. However, the cases cited were either unreported cases or cases where the party being sued was not a receiver, but a different functionary. Are there any reported California cases that explicitly hold that a state court receiver has quasi-judicial immunity?

A:      You are correct that California cases, up to now, that said state court receivers have quasi-judicial immunity were either unreported [Haider v. Speiser, 2012 WL 4101944 (2012), where the defendant was actually a ...

An employee who files an arbitration demand on claims unrelated to sexual harassment is not necessarily barred from later proceeding in court under the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act of 2021 (EFAA). In Ding v. Structure Therapeutics, Inc., the Ninth Circuit held that an employee who discovers a plausible sex-based harassment claim during arbitration may invoke the EFAA and proceed in court.

Dr. Ding, the company’s former Chief Financial Officer, filed a demand for arbitration with JAMS alleging discrimination, retaliation, and ...

For the better part of a decade, employers have been required to continually revise their arbitration agreements to reduce the risk of unconscionability challenges that were the focus of numerous appellate court decisions. Throughout this process the clause defining the claims to which the arbitration agreement applied was often ignored, carrying over unchanged from one version to the next. The Fourth District’s decision in Morales v. Superior Court is a reminder that a carefully drafted arbitration agreement is of little use if it does not cover the claims the employee ...

In the years since the enactment of the federal Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act of 2021 (EFAA), California courts have treated a single sufficiently pleaded harassment claim as rendering an entire case not subject to arbitration, even if other causes of action would have been covered by the employer’s arbitration agreement. Mitchell v. Lilac Solutions, Inc. holds that waiting to build a record against the harassment claim before moving to compel can be deemed a waiver of the right to arbitration by the employer.

In Mitchell, four former Lilac ...

Due to recent increases in fuel prices, the IRS announced a rare midyear increase to the 2026 mileage rates that may be used to calculate the deductible costs of operating an automobile for business, charitable, medical, or moving purposes.  Specifically, as of July 1, 2026, the standard mileage rates for the use of a car (also vans, pickups or panel trucks) are:

• 76 cents per mile driven for business use, up three and one-half cents from the rate for the first half of 2026;
• 23.5 cents per mile driven for medical, or moving purposes for active-duty members of the Armed Forces, up three cents ...

Buyers negotiate hard for a MAC condition. Courts almost never let them use it.

Every acquisition agreement allocates one uncomfortable question: Who bears the risk that the target's business deteriorates between signing and closing? The material adverse change (MAC) clause is the primary tool for answering it. It sits quietly in the closing conditions section until a deal goes sideways, and then it becomes the most litigated few words in the agreement.

The MAC clause is frequently the last provision to receive serious drafting attention and the first provision everyone wishes ...

An arbitration agreement can appear mutual on its face and still be interpreted as favoring the employer. That has become a recurring ground for courts to deny employer motions to compel arbitration, and Cluck v. GEO Secure Services, LLC is the latest example. In Cluck, California’s Fourth District Court of Appeal held that the arbitration agreement had to be construed together with a confidentiality agreement the employee signed the same day. The two documents read together were held to be substantively unconscionable because they sent the employee’s likely claims to ...