Courts/Legal News

California could collect another $1.5 billion in refunds from the energy crisis under a pair of court rulings this week, state officials said Thursday.

Workers are putting the finishing touches on the Stanley Mosk Library and Courts Building at 914 Capitol Mall, a $49.7 million renovation project.

With Sacramento about to plead its case for keeping the Kings in town, two lawyers served notice Tuesday that they will sue the city to block its deal for a new downtown arena.

When a teenager fatally injured a truck driver by slinging a chunk of concrete through the truck's windshield, that didn't get the windshield's manufacturer off the hook for money damages to compensate the driver's widow, a divided state appellate panel in Sacramento ruled Friday.

A lawsuit challenging a proposed tribal casino in Amador County has been shifted to federal court in Sacramento, and away from a Washington, D.C.-based court.

The folks at the Sacramento-based state appellate court had begun to wonder whether Thomas Wolfe was right when he wrote his best-known novel, "You Can't Go Home Again."

The Brown administration's high-stakes motion to wrest control of California's prisoner mental health care away from federal court oversight ran into a buzz saw Wednesday.

Former Yolo County prosecutor Clinton Parish will face a State Bar Court judge in July on ethics charges stemming from mudslinging in his failed campaign for the Yolo bench last spring.

A bankruptcy judge said he will rule Monday on whether to block the Stockton bankruptcy on behalf of Wall Street creditors who claim they were stiffed on municipal bond payments as the beleaguered city protected employee pension obligations.

After Tuesday's historic arguments before the Supreme Court on the legality of California's gay marriage ban, the long wait began for the court's June decision.

Former Lassen County Administrative Officer Tom Stone will have his day in court next month, when his $1 million wrongful termination lawsuit will get its first hearing in Lassen Superior Court.

The city of Sacramento is on the hook for nearly $800,000 in fees for attorneys who represented homeless people in a lawsuit charging police with violating their constitutional rights by failing to protect their belongings.

A nonprofit Placer County organization dedicated to providing independent living services to people with developmental disabilities violated the law when it failed to provide reasonable accommodations to one of its own employees who is deaf, regulators charged Monday in Sacramento federal court.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday and Wednesday will confront two distinct gay marriage cases, which together pose some very sensitive questions. Here's a rundown.

A Sacramento federal magistrate judge has found that negligence on the part of National Park Service officials caused a 9-year-old boy to plunge to his death off a mountain trail in Lassen Volcanic National Park in July 2009.

A teenage victim is suing the Sacramento City Unified School District and a former special education teacher convicted of child sex crimes.

Californians have a legal right to view court files of criminal and civil cases, but here's the catch: It soon may cost $10.

Siegrid "Ziggy" Robeson, who was fired as Twin Rivers Unified's deputy superintendent, is seeking $3.9 million from the school district for what she says was a campaign of retaliation that included a fabricated drunken driving report.

Billy Jerome Presley spent 17 months in a Georgia jail last year because he did not have $2,700 for a child support payment. He had no prior jail record but also no lawyer. In Baltimore last fall, Carl Hymes, 21, was arrested on charges of shining a laser into the eyes of a police officer. Bail was set at $75,000. He had no arrest record but also no lawyer. In West Orange, N.J., last summer, Walter Bloss, 89, was served with an eviction notice from the rent-controlled apartment he had lived in for 43 years after a dispute with his landlord. He had gone to court without a lawyer.

Scores of laid-off Sacramento teachers who sued last year complaining that their school district ignored seniority-based job protections won a partial victory Friday in Sacramento Superior Court.

The lawyer who led the investigation into the CalPERS bribery scandal has been sued for defamation by a private equity firm that was dumped by CalPERS as the probe unfolded.

If it turns out jurors don't believe Juan Carlos Orozco's story, there's a good chance it will come back to what he said he did when he found Galen May's tortured body in the victim's Antelope apartment.

California's criminal case against the longtime operator of a Sacramento elder-care facility was delayed again Thursday while the defense weighs a possible plea arrangement.

For nearly 17 years, Silvia Cata cared for elderly clients in her home on a dead-end street in Sacramento's Gardenland neighborhood, a residential enclave flanked by tire shops, lube and oil joints and a check-cashing store on the corner.

The California Air Resources Board said Monday that Yamaha Motor Corp. USA and Yamaha Motor Co. Ltd. of Japan have agreed to a court-approved settlement of more than $2.2 million to resolve allegations of illegal importation and sale of uncertified off-highway vehicles.

The desire for justice burns white-hot in Allison Claire. Always has.

A watchdog panel charged by the state Legislature and courts with investigating local government in El Dorado County won't be issuing a report this year.

The offer came in late last year – $3.5 million, Eric Boice said, if he, his brother and sister would drop the wrongful death and elder abuse lawsuit they had filed on behalf of their 82-year-old mother, Joan.

A wing of Sacramento's federal courthouse was christened Thursday evening the Justice Anthony M. Kennedy Library and Learning Center, with the beaming U.S. Supreme Court member in attendance.

Sacramento County District Attorney Jan Scully announced Thursday that 42-year-old Maria Soto pleaded no contest to three felony counts of grand theft in connection with her activities at a now-defunct Sacramento loan-modification firm.

An immigration consultant characterized by authorities as the mastermind of a marriage fraud scheme pleaded guilty Thursday in federal court in Sacramento.

Two Arkansas residents will be spending extended time behind bars in California after pleading no contest to offenses stemming from an October carjacking in Davis.

Former West Sacramento police officer Sergio Alvarez on Thursday pleaded not guilty in Yolo Superior Court to 35 counts of sexually assaulting women while on patrol.

WASHINGTON – The Federal Trade Commission said Thursday it had filed eight lawsuits in federal courts around the country against companies it accused of ordering or engineering the sending of hundreds of millions of scam text messages to mobile phone users.

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association announced Thursday that it is suing to end a $150 annual state fire fee imposed on California's rural residents and obtain refunds for those who have already paid.

The former mayoral aide at the center of the city's credit card scandal didn't leave empty-handed when she resigned in July.

Racial tensions, financial mismanagement and ongoing feuds are adversely affecting students attending the Twin Rivers Unified School District, according to a 24-page report released Thursday by the Sacramento County grand jury.