Legal Memos

Young v. Midland Funding LLC (2022) 84 Cal.App.5th 34. This case involved a SLAPP motion to strike a complaint which alleged violations of the Rosenthal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. The Court found that a prima facie case had been alleged of a violation of the Rosenthal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act by alleging that debt collectors had obtained a default judgment by falsely representing that substituted service had been effected. Defendants brought their SLAPP motion because Defendants believed that there had been effective substituted service but if it was ineffective, Defendants didn’t know of the service defect. The Court concluded that Plaintiff showed that Plaintiff probably would prevail on the merits of a Rosenthal Act claim and had produced evidence that the Defendants had falsely represented that substituted service on Plaintiff was ineffective and was not required to show that the Defendants knowingly made this false representation.

Little v. Commission on Teacher Credentialing (2022) 84 Cal.App.5th 322. This is a case in which former public school administrators sought a writ of prohibition barring the Commission on Teacher Credentialing and the Committee of Credentials from continuing with certain investigatory proceedings against them. The trial court determined that the Commission and Committee exceeded the jurisdiction by requesting documents and information directly from a teacher who had sued the school district earlier for retaliation. The Court of Appeal affirmed the trial court’s interpretation of Education Code § 44242.5(f)(1) as a limitation on the Commission’s ability to seek information and records for the purpose of establishing the jurisdiction of the Committee under § 44242.5(b). The Commission was not authorized to reach out to the teacher as part of its pre-jurisdictional investigation. Under 5 CCR 80308(c), the Commission was only authorized to make contact with a complainant prior to opening an investigation. The teacher was not a complainant as defined in 5 CCR 80300 (h). Further under Education Code § 44242.5(f) and § 44341, the Commission was only authorized to make inquiries and requests for production of information to the enumerated agencies for the purpose of determining whether jurisdiction existed under § 44242.5(b). The teacher was not among the enumerated agencies and the contact was therefore unauthorized.

/lkb

Related Attorney(s):
Gregory L. McCoy