An initiative designed to overturn the amendments to the summary judgment law has failed to qualify for the ballot. You can find those amendments here. In short, they make it harder to get summary judgment in a case and force more cases to go to trial. The rationale is:
Longstanding California law favors trial on the merits.
Summary judgment is a drastic procedure and should only be granted
when an action is without merit and both sides have a fair
opportunity to address the merits of an action or when an action
lacks a triable issue of fact.
What the bill fails to address is the cost of going to trial and the cost of making summary judgments harder to get. Individuals and small businesses, along with a lot of medium and large businesses can't aford to defend themselves as it is.
Posted by Justene Adamec at December 29, 2002 11:44 AM