The case involved George Lloyd Pool, who was arrested by Oakland police at a Safeway store after presenting a valid 1950-series $100 bill lacking the 'In God We Trust' motto, which store employees had been instructed to treat as a possible counterfeit despite no supporting basis. Pool sued Safeway for negligence in summoning police based on an erroneous suspicion and the City of Oakland for claims arising from his overnight detention on charges of interfering with an investigation, even after the bill's validity was quickly confirmed by phone. The court considered whether the evidence supported a negligence finding against Safeway and whether the trial court's jury instructions on reasonable cause for arrest required reversal of the verdict against Oakland. The analysis centered on the absence of probable cause or reasonable basis for treating the bill as suspicious, the limited scope of merchant detention statutes under Penal Code section 490.5, and the elements needed to establish reasonable cause for police action.
The case involved a plaintiff who sued for damages arising from unlawful arrest and false imprisonment but refused to present any evidence during two court-ordered arbitration hearings under California's mandatory judicial arbitration program for smaller claims. After the arbitrator entered an award for the defendants despite the lack of evidence, the plaintiff requested a trial de novo, but the trial court dismissed the action with prejudice, citing the plaintiff's willful nonparticipation as bordering on contempt. The California Supreme Court reversed, holding that the trial court exceeded its authority because neither the judicial arbitration statutes, related rules, nor Code of Civil Procedure section 581 expressly authorized dismissal for failure to present evidence at arbitration. The court further reasoned that the inherent discretionary power to dismiss applies only to lack of diligent prosecution after statutory minimum delays or to sham complaints, neither of which was present, and that the plaintiff retained the statutory right to a trial de novo following an arbitration award.
The case involved a libel lawsuit by two San Francisco police inspectors and a former prosecutor against the Hearst Corporation's San Francisco Examiner and two reporters, arising from 1976 articles that published allegations from a prisoner's affidavit claiming the officials had used threats, coercion, and other misconduct to obtain false testimony leading to a wrongful murder conviction. A jury awarded the plaintiffs $4.56 million, and the Court of Appeal affirmed. Applying the actual malice standard from New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, the California Supreme Court conducted an independent review of the record and concluded that the evidence did not clearly and convincingly establish that the reporters knew the statements were false or published them with reckless disregard for their truth or falsity. The court therefore held that the libel judgment violated First Amendment protections.
In this habeas corpus proceeding, Youth Authority wards challenged the installation of a microphone in the Protestant chapel complex at the Karl Holton School, contending that the device would infringe on their religious freedom and privacy during worship, confessions, and counseling sessions. The court described the surveillance system's technical features, including its placement in the foyer with open doors to surrounding areas, noise-threshold activation connected to a central control room, and the authority's ability to disable it upon request, while noting the YA's stated security goals of detecting disturbances and gathering information. The opinion evaluated these measures against statutory protections like Penal Code section 636 on confidential communications and considered alternative security options such as personal staff beepers, ultimately addressing whether the monitoring violated the wards' rights.
CBS sought to inspect and copy applications and licenses for concealed weapons issued by the Los Angeles County Sheriff under the California Public Records Act to investigate possible abuses of discretion in their issuance. The trial court ordered disclosure of most current licenses with home addresses redacted but denied access to the applications. On appeal, the Supreme Court conducted an independent review and held that the records were not exempt from disclosure under the Act, noting that such information had been open to public inspection from 1957 to 1968, that no specific statutory exemption applied, and that the public interest in overseeing the permitting process outweighed privacy concerns, particularly given the pro forma nature of many applications.
The case concerned Ronald Jerome Smallwood's convictions for first degree murder with firearm use and robbery with firearm and great bodily injury enhancements, along with true findings on special circumstance allegations that the murder was intentional and for financial gain and was committed during a robbery; the trial court imposed a death sentence after the defendant waived a jury at the penalty phase. Smallwood appealed the convictions and sentence automatically and filed a consolidated habeas corpus petition, raising claims including error in the denial of his motion to sever the House and Dunbar murder counts and challenges to witness credibility based on post-trial recantations. The court reviewed the trial evidence, including testimony from witnesses Arthur Spencer and Kathy Hall linking Smallwood to the House shooting during an apparent robbery, noted Spencer's recantation of testimony followed by a recantation of the recantation due to safety concerns, and examined whether joinder of the counts was prejudicial under the circumstances.
