Drafted and Shafted: Who Should Complain About Male-Only Registration?

SHERRY F. COLB

Cornell law professor comments on a recent opinion by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit holding that requiring men but not women to register for the draft is constitutional under mandatory U.S. Supreme Court precedents. Specifically, Colb considers what the U.S. Supreme Court should do if it agrees to hear the case and more narrowly, whether the motives of the plaintiffs in that case bear on how the case should come out.

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Marriage of DeSouza

Docket: A156311(First Appellate District)

Opinion Date: August 27, 2020

Judge: Siggins

Areas of Law: Family Law

Erica served Francis with a petition for dissolution of marriage, along with an automatic temporary restraining order that prohibited him from “[t]ransferring, encumbering, hypothecating, concealing, or in any way disposing of any property ... without the written consent of the other party or an order of the court, except in the usual course of business or for the necessities of life.” Francis subsequently initiated three bitcoin-related transactions, involving $45,000, $99,451, and $44,940. One account holder lost hundreds of thousands of bitcoins to hacking and embezzlement. Francis knew of the company’s bankruptcy but did not recover the bitcoins or his investment. Francis filed his preliminary schedule of assets, disclosing ownership of 1,062.21 bitcoins. Erica sought her half of the community bitcoins. Francis then disclosed that some were tied up in the bankruptcy so that he possessed only 613.53 of the 1062.21 community bitcoins. The court ordered Francis to transfer to Erica half of the bitcoins he had in his possession, to show cause why he should not be ordered to transfer an additional 224.34 bitcoins and proportional cryptocurrency, and to pay Erica’s attorney’s fees and costs. The court found that Francis had violated the automatic restraining order and his fiduciary duties and that he affirmatively hid information. The court of appeal affirmed, rejecting Francis’s argument that the information he withheld was not material and, alternatively, there was no substantial evidence his breach impaired Erica’s interest in their community estate.

Marshall v. Webster

Docket: C088240(Third Appellate District)

Opinion Date: August 27, 2020

Judge: Krause

Areas of Law: Personal Injury

Plaintiffs Richard and Susan Marshall sued for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress, alleging that defendant Daniel Webster made maliciously false and defamatory statements about them in an electronic book and on social media. They alleged that defendant, a reporter and author, maliciously and with reckless disregard for the truth, published false statements about them, their political activities, and about a lawsuit they filed against the town in which they live. These statements, which appeared on Facebook, and in an electronic book available on Amazon’s Kindle service and on eBay, were alleged to have caused them severe emotional distress and damaged their reputations in the community. The trial court granted defendant’s special motion to strike the complaint pursuant to Code of Civil Procedure section 425.16, California’s anti-SLAPP statute. The court’s order provided that defendant was entitled to attorney fees under the statute and, in August 2018, it awarded him $79,000 in fees. On appeal, plaintiffs challenged the dismissal of their complaint and the award of attorney fees. In the published portion of its opinion, the Court of Appeal concluded the trial court’s order granting defendant’s special motion to strike the complaint was a final determination of the rights of the parties, thus constituting a judgment from which plaintiffs failed timely to perfect an appeal. With respect to the attorney fees order, the Court found no abuse of discretion and affirmed.

Prang v. L.A. County Assessment Appeals Board No. 2

Docket: B301194(Second Appellate District)

Opinion Date: August 27, 2020

Judge: Brian M. Hoffstadt

Areas of Law: Tax Law

The Court of Appeal affirmed the trial court's issuance of a writ of administrative mandamus allowing the Assessor to levy more than four years' worth of escape assessments under Revenue and Taxation Code section 532, subdivision (b)(3). The court held that every single one of the prerequisites for the escape assessments challenged by Downey SPE is not only satisfied, but is undisputedly so. The court also held that the filing requirement set forth in section 480.1 is not satisfied when the taxpayer acquiring the legal entity recorded a document with less than all the information required by section 480.1. Therefore, taxpayers must strictly comply with those aspects of the notice requirements of section 480.1. In this case, it is undisputed that Downey SPE's act of recording the Certificate with the County Recorder's Office did not strictly comply with section 480.1's informational requirements (because it lacked several categories of information) or with section 480.1's requirement that the information be provided to the State Board.