Legal Memos

Franklin v. Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital (2022) 82 Cal.App.5th 395. This was a case in which a physician negligently injured a patient during surgery performed at the hospital. The patient sued the physician and the hospital. The hospital was granted summary judgment in that the physician was simply using the hospital’s operating room and had no instruction from the hospital in how to treat the plaintiff or any right to control the physician’s treatment of the plaintiff.

Paredes v. Credit Consulting Services, Inc. (2022) 82 Cal.App.5th 410. This is a SLAPP case. A motion was filed to strike a cross-complaint more than one year after the complaint itself. The court upheld the denial of the motion holding that the filing of the complaint tolled or suspended the one year statute of limitations as to the cross-complaint but the debtor showed a probability of prevailing because the debt involved could be found to have arisen from a consumer credit transaction when a dental office provided services on credit and disputed the adequacy of an insurance payment.

Cam-Carson, LLC v. Carson Reclamation Authority (2022) 82 Cal.App.5th 535. The court in this case held that a real estate developer could sue both the city and its former redevelopment agency on an alter ego theory applying that theory to governmental entities on the facts presented in the case.

Frym v. 601 Main Street, LLC (2022) 82 Cal.App5th 613. This is another SLAPP case. This was filed by a landlord and its attorney but was denied by the trial court after finding that it was moot following the tenant’s voluntary dismissal of claims against them. The trial court also denied attorneys fees and costs. The court of appeal reversed and remanded, finding that the landlord and the attorney were the prevailing parties entitled to a mandatory award of reasonable fees.

Musgrove v. Silver (2022) 82 Cal.App.5th 694. The heirs of an employee who died in a drowning while swimming after consuming alcohol and cocaine with a coworker sued the owner of the employer. Summary judgment was granted to the owner with the court reasoning that the owner could not be held directly liable because the owner was not the employer, social-host immunity applied to alcohol furnished by the owner during a company subsidized event under Civil Code § 1714(c) and Business and Professions Code § 25602(b) and any duty to protect that could have arisen from an employment relationship didn’t exist when the deceased employee was not at work.

/lsa

Related Attorney(s):
Gregory L. McCoy