At its Wednesday conference, in addition to surprisingly denying a Ninth Circuit request for help on a question of California law, the Supreme Court granted review in two cases raising Fourth Amendment warrantless search issues.

In People v. Ovieda, the Second District, Division Six, Court of Appeal, in a 2-1 published opinion, applied the “community caretaking” exception to the Fourth Amendment, concluding police acted properly in making a “safety sweep” of the home of the reportedly suicidal defendant after they detained him outside his home.  The sweep led to a conviction for possessing an assault rifle and manufacturing concentrated cannabis.

In In re Webb, the Fourth District, Division One, held in a published opinion that it was illegal to require a defendant to waive her Fourth Amendment rights as a condition of being released on bail.  The court was unanimous in the result in this case, but a concurring justice disagreed with the majority — which, in turn, disagreed with two earlier Court of Appeal decisions — when she asserted that “a trial court has inherent authority to impose conditions on a defendant’s release, even when a defendant is able to post the amount of bail set forth in the court’s bail schedule.”

Other actions include:

  • The court issued a grant-and-hold order in Weiss v. Superior Court, where the Court of Appeal summarily denied a writ petition.  Weiss is on hold for Lawson v. ZB, N.A., a case in which briefing is in progress and that raises the issue whether a representative action under the Private Attorneys General Act of 2004 (Lab. Code, § 2698 et seq.) seeking recovery of individualized lost wages as civil penalties under Labor Code section 558 falls within the preemptive scope of the Federal Arbitration Act (9 U.S.C. § 1 et seq.).
  • The court also granted review in and held People v. Acosta.  That case is waiting for a decision in In re Ricardo P., a soon-to-be-argued case involving the propriety of imposing an “electronics search condition” for probation.
  • The court modified its opinion in Alvarado v. Dart Container Corporation of California about overtime pay by adding a footnote to explain it is not deciding “whether, under California law, regular rate of pay is properly calculated on a pay-period basis or a workweek basis.”