Plaintiff limited partners brought a malicious prosecution action against defendants, property owners and their attorneys - timscotty/timscotty GitHub Wiki

Plaintiff limited partners brought a malicious prosecution action against defendants, property owners and their attorneys, after the partners were dismissed from a breach of lease action against the partnership. The Superior Court of Orange County, California, denied defendants' motion to strike under Code Civ. Proc., § 425.16, the anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) statute. Defendants appealed.

Overview: Legal definition of Promissory estoppel

The court of appeal held that the anti-SLAPP motion was properly denied because the limited partners satisfied all three elements of a malicious prosecution case: favorable termination, lack of probable cause, and malice. The voluntary dismissal of the limited partners was presumed to be a favorable termination on the merits, and conflicting evidence as to whether the presumption could be rebutted did not defeat the prima facie case. The limited partners also had a prima facie case that defendants lacked probable cause to bring the partners into the action because liability was limited under Corp. Code, § 15903.03, given that the limited partners were not on the lease and the evidence did not show that they transacted business with defendants. Finally, there was a prima facie case as to malice. The actions of one attorney raised a very strong inference that the purpose of the suit was to use the limited partners as pawns in an ongoing chess game against the partnership. An associate attorney did not have a defense based on following a superior's instructions. As to the owners, there was evidence that they were looking to end the lease in order to sell and redevelop the property.

The court affirmed the trial court's denial of the anti-SLAPP motion.

Defendant pharmacist appealed a judgment of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County (California), which convicted him following a jury trial of four counts of possession for sale of four controlled substances in violation of Cal. Health & Safety Code § 11351.

After a jury trial, the trial court entered a judgment convicting defendant pharmacist on four counts of possession for sale of four controlled substances in violation of Cal. Health & Safety Code § 11378. The court affirmed the trial court's judgment of conviction, holding that the evidence was legally sufficient to submit to the jury because Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code § 4230 did not confer blanket immunity on defendant to possess controlled substances for any purpose on pharmacy premises. The court further held that the evidence was factually sufficient to sustain the convictions, because there was compelling evidence that defendant possessed the controlled substances for the purpose of illegally distributing them: there was undisputed evidence that defendant possessed drugs that disappeared from the pharmacy without any accounting for either their lawful distribution or theft, and that the drugs were of a kind rarely prescribed by physicians but which defendant knew were in demand on the street. The trial court did not abuse its discretion in finding that a narcotic enforcement agent was an expert or in denying defendant's motion to suppress evidence obtained through an audit.

The court affirmed the trial court's judgment convicting defendant pharmacist of four counts of illegally possessing controlled substances for sale because defendant did not have blanket immunity to possess and sell controlled substances, and the trial court did not abuse its discretion in allowing a narcotics agent to testify as an expert or in denying defendant's motion to suppress evidence obtained through a state pharmacy board's audit.