Insights
Notes from the practice
Practical writing on public agency law, land use, and appellate strategy — aimed at the people who have to make the decision, not just review it.
- Municipal Law
Five Brown Act Missteps That Turn a Routine Closed Session Into Litigation
The Ralph M. Brown Act is short, old, and deceptively simple. Most of the closed-session problems we are asked to clean up are not the product of bad faith. They are the product of an agenda description written in a hurry. 1. The agenda description is too thin Government Code section 54954.5 supplies safe-harbor language for the common closed session categories. Agencies that depart from it to be more concise frequently end up describing the item so generally that the public cannot tell what...
- Litigation & Appeals
Preserving the Record: What Trial Counsel Should Do Before There Is an Appeal
Appellate lawyers spend a great deal of time reading records that cannot support the argument the case needs. Almost every one of those problems was fixable at trial, at little cost, by counsel who was thinking one level up. Objections have to be specific A general objection preserves very little. The objection should name the ground, and where an evidentiary ruling matters, counsel should make an offer of proof detailed enough that a reviewing court can evaluate what was excluded. Get the...