California Court of Appeal,  California Courts,  California Procedure,  Stare Decisis

The Liberty of the Court of Appeal

Several months ago, I posted about a local court of appeal decision, Cuccia v. Superior Court, case no. B197278 (July 16, 2007), that chided the trial judge for not following the rules of stare decisis:

The doctrine of stare decisis requires a trial court to follow an unambiguous published holding of the Court of Appeal, even if the trial court believes that the appellate opinion was erroneously decided. This, we had assumed, was fairly obvious to every trial court judge; that is, until now.

The court went on to state that a trial court that disagrees with the precedent “should make a record articulating why it believes the binding opinion is erroneous and should be revisited by the appellate court which is free to either disagree with or overrule the opinion.” (Emphasis added)

Another reminder of the liberty the Court of Appeal has in overturning decisions — or in not following the decision of another district — arrives in the form of In re Pope, case no. C051564 (3d Dist. Jan. 8, 2008), in which the Third District of the Court of Appeal explicitly rejects the holding of a recent case in the First District (emphasis added):

The superior court’s ruling was based on a decision of the Court of Appeal, First Appellate District, Division Two. (In re Phelon (2005) 132 Cal.App.4th 1214 (Phelon).) The superior court was required to follow Phelon. We are not so restrained. In our view, Phelon was wrongly decided.

A Court of Appeal typically will not depart from precedent decided in other districts.  But there is no procedural rule that prevents them from doing so in the appropriate case.  Don’t give up on a case where there is bad Court of Appeal precedent when you can make a good argument that the court should depart from it.