LEGAL MEMOS

Meads v. Driggers (2025) 114 Cal.App.5th 28. This is a SLAPP matter. The trial court granted a SLAPP motion with respect to a cross-complaint for breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty which was filed in a suit for judicial dissolution of a limited liability company. The cross-complaint alleged that there was a provision in the company’s operating agreement that prohibited the judicial dissolution lawsuit. The Court of Appeal affirmed the trial court finding that the complaint’s filing was a protected petitioning activity and the cross-complaint lacked the probability of prevailing because the purported waiver of the right to seek judicial dissolution was unlawful, void and unenforceable which is contrary to the express provisions of the Corporations Code. The court construed various provisions of the Corporations Code as leading to the conclusion that the operating agreement could not vary or waive a member’s right to seek judicial dissolution in the circumstances specified by statute because such waiver was permissible only to the extent expressly provided by statute, and there was no such express provision.

Noland v. Land of the Free, L.P. (2025) 114 CalApp.5th 426. A leasing company and its owner hired a leasing agent to show the company’s properties to potential tenants. After the company failed to pay the agent a commission, the agent sued for various causes of action. The trial court denied the company’s first motion for summary judgment and subsequently the company sought a continuance with the company’s counsel being in an automotive accident, which the trial court granted. The company then filed a second motion for summary judgment which the trial court granted. The Court of Appeal affirmed but separately imposed a monetary sanction on the agent’s attorney for not deleting fabrications which were generated by artificial intelligence that appeared in the briefing. The court noted that the extensive reliance on non-existent legal authority justify the court in striking the opening brief altogether or dismissing the appeal, but nothing indicated that the agent was aware of the fabrications, and the company addressed the agent’s contentions on the merits. The Court of Appeal held the trial court did not abuse its discretion by considering the company’s second motion for summary judgment. The trial court was not required to rule on that motion, it had discretion to exercise its inherent power to reconsider the prior order and grant the second motion. As the second summary judgment motion was virtually identical to the first, the trial court was not required to infer from the motion that the earlier claim that plaintiff’s council’s injuries were fabricated must be true.

The failure to check the citations created by artificial intelligence highlights the California Rules of Court Section 8.204(a1)(B) because it did not support each point with citations to real legal authority. An attorney cannot delegate checking every case citation, fact and argument to make sure it is correct and proper because the attorney used artificial intelligence. The attorney’s errors were not isolated as nearly all of the case quotations in the opening brief and many more in the reply brief were fabricated and many of the cases cited did not stand for the propositions for which they were cited.

/lsa