Civil Procedure

What Happened On May 28, 2026, the California Supreme Court issued a major ruling that changes the rules around one of the most powerful — and most abused — tools in California litigation: Code of Civil Procedure section 170.6, the "peremptory challenge" that lets any party kick a judge off their case, no questions asked, no reasons required. The case is J.O. v. Superior Court, and the headline is simple: courts can now look behind a mass pattern of judge challenges and ask w

What Happened On August 6, 2026, the California Supreme Court handed down a ruling that changes how settlement offers work in civil lawsuits across the state. The case is Gorobets v. Jaguar Land Rover North America, LLC, and it answers a question that's been quietly dividing lower courts: can one settlement offer give the other side two different deals to choose from? The short answer, according to the Court: yes — as long as the offer is clear and at least one of the choices

When multiple defendants are sued in California, early procedural moves over venue—where the trial takes place—can decide where the case is litigated. In Cholakian & Associates v. Superior Court (2015) 236 Cal.App.4th 361, the Court of Appeal addressed a frequent venue clash: In a lawsuit with multiple defendants, can a plaintiff stop a defendant from transferring the case to their home county by claiming another county is more convenient for witnesses—even if not all defenda

Few procedural rulings get cited as often — or as loosely — as URS Corp. v. Atkinson/Walsh Joint Venture (2017) 15 Cal.App.5th 872. Litigators invoke it constantly whenever an attorney disqualification order gets appealed, but the case is frequently misread as staying far more than it actually does. Understanding what the court actually held is essential for anyone navigating a disqualification appeal — especially when statutory deadlines like the five-year prosecution rule a

California's "five-year rule" is one of the most unforgiving deadlines in civil litigation. Under Code of Civil Procedure sections 583.310 and 583.360, a plaintiff must bring a case to trial within five years of filing, or the case must be dismissed — not as a discretionary sanction, but as a mandatory, jurisdictional consequence. Courts have no power to excuse it once it expires, no matter how close a case is to trial or how sympathetic the underlying facts may be. A recent