In addition to two recorded votes accompanied by a dissenting statement from the denial of review in a juvenile delinquency case with racial considerations, Supreme Court actions of note at its Wednesday conference included:
- The court agreed to hear Bailey v. San Francisco District Attorney’s Office. As stated by court staff, the issue is, “Did the Court of Appeal properly affirm summary judgment in favor of defendants on plaintiff’s claims of hostile work environment based on race, retaliation, and failure to prevent discrimination, harassment and retaliation?” In a published opinion, the First District, Division One, Court of Appeal concluded that, despite “a co-worker’s alleged use of a highly offensive racial epithet,” the plaintiff did not establish a discrimination claim because she didn’t cite “any case holding that a single, albeit egregious, racial epithet by a co-worker, without more, created a hostile work environment” and she didn’t make a “factual showing that the conditions of her employment were so altered by the one slur by her coworker as to constitute actionable harassment.” Justices Joshua Groban and Martin Jenkins did not vote for review. It’s unusual to have a less-than-unanimous grant of review.
- The court granted-and-held in Annie G. v. Glacial Garden Skating Arenas, LLC. The Second District, Division Three, unpublished opinion mostly upheld the dismissal on demurrer of an action by a nine-year-old skater whose coach sexually molested her. The defendant and respondent on appeal was a skating rink that had fired the coach for improprieties before the plaintiff became his student at another rink. The appellate court held that the rink didn’t have a duty to the plaintiff to report the coach, but that the plaintiff could amend her complaint to claim the rink misrepresented the coach’s fitness. [Disclosure: Horvitz & Levy represented two former defendants in the case.] Annie G. is on hold for Brown v. USA Taekwondo, which will be argued next week. The court in Brown is expected to decide the appropriate test that minor plaintiffs must satisfy to establish a duty by defendants to protect them from sexual abuse by third parties.
- The court denied the Attorney General’s petition for review and depublication request in People v. Johnson, but Justice Carol Corrigan recorded a vote to hear the case. The First District, Division Two, opinion found a lack of substantial evidence to support an order extending the involuntary commitment as a mentally disordered offender of a 70-year-old defendant with schizophrenia.
- There were 11 criminal case grant-and-holds: eight more holding for a decision in People v. Lewis (see here), one more holding for People v. Lopez (see here), and two more holding for both Lewis and Lopez.