After two straight conferences with no straight grants, yesterday’s double conference yielded one. Here are some of the notable actions.

Voting on bonds? The court granted review in City of San José v. Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and it limited the issue to: “Is the issuance of pension obligation bonds to finance unfunded pension liability subject to the voter-approval requirement of article XVI, section 18, subdivision (a) of the California Constitution?” (Link added.) The Sixth District Court of Appeal’s published opinion said “no.” The constitutional provision requires two-thirds of voters’ approval for a city to “incur any indebtedness or liability in any manner or for any purpose exceeding in any year the income and revenue provided for such year.” The Sixth District said the vote requirement doesn’t apply because the City hadn’t incurred any such indebtedness or liability. Rather, the court held, “The actions that incurred the city’s existing liability—enacting the pension plans and employing the individuals covered by them—have already occurred.” The appellate court also reasoned that “the city does not seek to increase pension benefits but instead to issue bonds to provide an income stream for a liability it has already incurred.”

Ambulances and MICRA grant-and-hold. Lopez v. Dayton is a grant-and-hold for Gutierrez v. Tostado (see here), where the court will decide whether the one-year statute of limitations in the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act (Code Civ. Proc., § 340.5) applies to a personal injury claim alleging that the plaintiff’s vehicle was struck by a negligently driven ambulance. In Lopez, the First District, Division One, unpublished opinion held that the MICRA statute of limitations — not the longer limitations period for personal injury cases in general — does apply to such a claim. Division One said “there is no authority for the proposition that the applicability of MICRA is limited to medical malpractice claims.”

New evidence OSC. The court issued an order to show cause, returnable in the superior court, in In re Galik. Justice Leondra Kruger was recused. The superior court is to determine whether the habeas corpus petitioner is “entitled to relief based on his claim that newly discovered DNA evidence, considered together with newly discovered evidence of third party culpability . . ., is sufficiently material and credible that it more likely than not would have changed the outcome of the case. (Penal Code § 1473, subd. (b)(1)(C)(i).)” A Fifth District unpublished opinion denied a habeas petition based on newly discovered DNA evidence. Galik was convicted of the 1996 murder of an 11-year-old girl. The judge who arraigned Galik was publicly admonished for ex parte communications with Galik’s defense counsel. Galik is currently represented by the Northern California Innocence Project.

Detention hearing grant-and-transfer. The court granted review in In re Garcia and sent the case back to the Fifth District, which had summarily denied a habeas corpus petition. The appellate court is “ordered to reconsider, in light of In re Harris (2024) 16 Cal.5th 292, whether the superior court: erroneously presumed the truth of the criminal charges; ensured the evidence it considered was sufficiently reliable; or erroneously prevented petitioner from presenting information by proffer or otherwise.” Harris addressed how a superior court is to evaluate whether to detain an arrestee without bail.

2×2 votes for review about youth offender parole denial.  Justices Goodwin Liu and Kelli Evans recorded dissenting votes from the denials of review in People v. Cano and People v. McNeill. The Second District, Divisions Three and Five, respectively, issued unpublished opinions rejecting constitutional challenges to the statute that prevents parole hearings for defendants serving life without parole sentences for special circumstances murders committed between the ages of 18 and 26. In People v. Hardin (2024) 15 Cal.5th 834, the Supreme Court found unavailing an equal protection attack. (See here.) Justices Liu and Evans dissented there. They have not sought to revisit the equal protection issue, but, after Hardin, they have been regularly dissenting from other review denials in youth offender parole cases, including once with a separate statement asserting that cruel-or-unusual-punishment issues should be addressed (see here, here, and here).

Vote for review of whistleblower case. The court denied review in Ververka v. Department of Veterans Affairs, but Justice Evans recorded a vote to grant in the case where, although a jury found the plaintiff’s making of protected disclosures were contributing factors in the plaintiff’s firing by the defendant Department, there was no liability because the Department proved it would have made the same decision for non-retaliatory reasons. The First District, Division One, published opinion rejected an argument that, as summarized by the appellate court, “an employer’s ‘same decision’ showing . . . precludes only an award of damages and backpay and an order of reinstatement and, as a result, [the plaintiff] was entitled to declaratory relief and reasonable attorney’s fees and costs.”

Criminal case grant-and-holds. There were six criminal case grant-and-holds:  one more waiting for decisions in two death penalty appeals — People v. Bankston and People v. Hin (see here); one more holding for People v. Walker (see here), which was decided today [Update: see here]; one more waiting for People v. Patton (see here), two more on hold for People v. Rhodius (see here), and one more waiting for People v. Wiley (see here).

Grant-and-hold dispositions (see here). Two cases that were holding for the enhancement-on-resentencing opinion in People v. Arellano (2024) 16 Cal.5th 457 (see here) were removed from the docket. The court dismissed review in one and sent the other one back to the Court of Appeal for reconsideration in light of Arellano.