On August 30, appellate partner Don Willenburg published an article in The Recorder about the California Supreme Court's decision earlier this month in Reid v. Google and its effect on summary judgment practice and appellate review. In his article, Mr. Willenburg explains that while much of the press and Internet chatter about Reid v. Google has centered on the age discrimination portion of the decision, far more significant, to a far broader range of cases, is the part of the court's decision regarding appellate review of objections to evidence in summary judgment cases. Specifically, does a trial court's failure to rule on a party's evidentiary objections relating to a summary judgment motion waive the objections on appeal?
Prior to this decision, many courts held (in part based on loose talk in footnotes of two prior Supreme Court opinions) that if a trial judge did not rule on objections in a summary judgment hearing, then the party making those objections "waived" them on appeal. Usually, waiver is the intentional relinquishment of a right, and this "waiver" was nothing of the sort. Trial judges are often loath to rule on all evidentiary objections made in connection with summary judgment. Some courts (following a notorious Court of Appeal case, Biljac Associates v. First Interstate Bank) simply said "the Court is relying on admissible evidence only," which further muddied the water about what was and was not preserved for appeal. Reid disapproved of both this practice and the Supreme Court's prior holdings on the topic. Under Reid, so long as a party has filed written objections or made oral objections at the hearing, those objections are preserved for appeal, whether or not the trial court actually rules on them.
To read the full article, click here.