Mr. Kapp’s Published Appeals Cases

A note to our visitors: California state appeals courts have a unique practice of only “officially publishing” those cases which are “important enough”.

This is explained in California Rule of Court 8.1105(c). According to the most recent information, 91% of appeals decisions – all of which would be published in other states – are not published. Thus, these cases represent only the “tip of the iceberg”. We have not placed other cases here to protect the privacy of the litigants:

- Fierro vs International Harvester (1982) (products liability)

- Meighan vs Shore (1995) (major precedent: legal malpractice establishing lawyer’s duty to client’s spouse)

- Ruttenberg vs Ruttenberg (1997) (major precedent: clarifying duties between hostile wrongful death heirs)

- Quintanilla vs Dunkleman (2005) (major precedent: upholding medical malpractice verdict and clarifying various principles of medical malpractice law)

- Alshafie vs Lallande (2009) (major precedent: severely limited California’s archaic law requiring non-California plaintiffs to post a “costs bond” in order to proceed with lawsuit