Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, aka the Chair of the Judicial Council, today issued an order under newly amended rule 8.66 authorizing each of the six Court of Appeal districts to “[i]ssue an order applying the provisions of amended rule 8.66 retroactively to the starting date of the [appellate] court’s current implementation order.”  (Link added.)

The Chief Justice’s order “is to be in effect for proceedings in which the time period in the California Rules of Court would occur between the day in March 2020 that is the first day of the court’s current implementation order, and the day in April 2020 that is the last day of the court’s current implementation order.”

The effect of this new authorization appears to be that the Courts of Appeal can now toll, as well as extend, “any time periods specified by” the appellate rules in the California Rules of Court.  The significance of tolling and of the ability to now affect “any time periods” is explained here.

It is unclear why the Chief Justice opted to continue having individual Courts of Appeal issue extension (or, now, tolling) orders instead of herself issuing one tolling or extension order that applies statewide.  The changes to rule 8.66 clearly give her the power to make a uniform order for the entire state and seem to remove any disincentive to doing so.  (Again, see here.)  Because the various districts have different dates in their original implementation orders, the emergency rules governing appellate timing remain somewhat of a patchwork.

We haven’t yet seen any new Court of Appeal tolling or extension orders, but they should follow soon.

[Updated:  Right after I posted, I thought of a reason why the Chief Justice hasn’t issued a statewide order yet.  Maybe she believes that she can’t retroactively change the individual districts’ initial implementation orders to provide for tolling of “any time periods” and that only the districts can.  If so, once the districts retroactively broaden those implementation orders, and when the earliest of them is set to expire, the Chief Justice might then issue an order tolling or extending time for California as a whole.  The patchwork might be only temporary.]