Supreme Court of California - Important Cases

Important Cases

The Court has handed down many important and influential decisions, of which some are listed below (ordered by date descending). Most of the decisions listed below were landmark decisions that were the first such decisions in the U.S. or the world.

• Houston v. Williams, a leading case on the separation of powers under the California Constitution.

• Escola v. Coca-Cola Bottling Co., then-Associate Justice Roger Traynor suggested in a now-famous concurring opinion that the Court should dispose of legal fictions like warranties and impose strict liability for defective products as a matter of public policy.

• Perez v. Sharp, the Court overturned the statutory ban on interracial marriage as unconstitutional. Perez directly influenced the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision on this issue, Loving v. Virginia (1967).

• Summers v. Tice, the Court shifted the burden to the defense to disprove causation when it was clear that one of two defendants must have caused the plaintiff's injury, but it was not clear which one.

• Dillon v. Legg, the Court radically expanded the tort of negligent infliction of emotional distress {NIED) beyond its traditional form, which historically had been limited to plaintiffs standing in the same "zone of danger" as a relative who was killed.

• Rowland v. Christian, the Court abolished the old distinctions between different types of persons entering land and imposed a general duty of care in the context of the tort of negligence.

• People v. Anderson, the Court relied upon the state constitutional clause prohibiting "cruel or unusual punishment" (note the difference from the federal Constitution's "cruel and unusual punishment" clause) to abolish capital punishment in California. The state electorate promptly overruled Anderson that same year with a popular initiative, Proposition 17, that kept the "cruel or unusual" clause but declared the death penalty to be neither cruel nor unusual.

• Pitchess v. Superior Court, the Court held that criminal defendants have a right to access the arresting officer's personnel file when the defendant alleges in an affidavit that the officer used excessive force or lied about the circumstances of the arrest.

• Li v. Yellow Cab Co., the Court embraced comparative negligence as part of California tort law and rejected strict contributory negligence.

• Tarasoff v. Regents of the University of California, the Court held that mental health professionals have a duty to protect individuals who are being threatened with bodily harm by a patient. The original 1974 decision mandated warning the threatened individual, but a 1976 rehearing resulted in a decision calling for a "duty to protect" the intended victim, which did not necessarily require that a potential victim be informed of the threat.

• Marvin v. Marvin, the Court ruled in favor of the enforceability of non-marital relationship contracts, express or implied, to the extent that they are not founded purely upon meretricious sexual services. In other words, even though California does not recognize common law marriage, persons who cohabit for long periods of time and commingle their assets are allowed to plead and prove marriage-like contracts for support and division of property.

• Robins v. Pruneyard Shopping Center, the Court found that the broad right to freedom of speech in the state constitution included an implied right to freedom of speech in private shopping centers. The U.S. Supreme Court in turn held that the state supreme court's decision did not amount to a "taking" of the shopping center under federal constitutional law.

• Sindell v. Abbott Laboratories, the Court imposed market share liability on the makers of fungible hazardous products.

• Thing v. La Chusa, the Court withdrew from the expansive form of NIED set forth in Dillon and imposed a rigid bright-line test for recovery in bystander NIED cases. The Thing decision included extensive dicta hostile to plaintiffs which more generally limited the scope of recovery for both the tort of negligence and emotional distress damages in California.

• Moore v. Regents of the University of California, the Court held that patients do not have intellectual property rights in profits from medical discoveries made with their body parts.

• Wendland v. Wendland, the Court held that in the absence of a legally recognized method of determining who should make medical decisions on the behalf of an incompetent patient, the constitutional right to life and right to privacy granted special protection to the incompetent person.

• In re Marriage Cases, the Court held that sexual orientation is a protected class which requires strict scrutiny and under such scrutiny, laws prohibiting same-sex marriage are unconstitutional under the state constitution. The state electorate overturned the marriage portion of the decision that same year by enacting a popular initiative, Proposition 8, but left in place the discrimination protections.

• People v. Diaz, the Court held that the warrantless search of information in a cell phone was valid when incident to a lawful arrest.