U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder sided with seven religious leaders in granting their motion for permanent injunction in her long-anticipated 55-page order keeping the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors from restoring a cross to the county seal. The lawsuit came after a 3-2 vote by the supervisors in January 2014 to include an image of a cross on the county seal. The cross would have been placed atop a depiction of the San Gabriel Mission featured in the center-right side of the seal.   read more

Representing Kings County and a group of farmers, attorney Stuart Flashman dogged the California High Speed Rail Authority for proposing major changes to the train’s operating system and for attempting to use bond money without going back to California voters for approval. Flashman repeatedly disagreed with the authority’s cost and ridership estimates, calling the studies “insane” while questioning the viability of the mammoth public works project.   read more

The award in the civil rights lawsuit is more than double San Jose’s previous largest payout. Lam has been a wheelchair-bound paraplegic since being shot in January 2014 during a domestic dispute at home with his boyfriend. Someone called the police and reported a man was acting as if he were having a mental breakdown. Lam was standing with a knife pointed at his own stomach and no one else around when an officer shot him in the back twice.   read more

After years of intractable acrimony over how to manage the Klamath River in Northern California and Southern Oregon, all the warring parties reached an accord last year to take down four dams. But last week, it was reported that legislation had been submitted by Representative Greg Walden (R-Oregon), a supporter of the agreement from the Upper Klamath Basin and the House’s third-most-powerful member, that would probably wreck it.   read more

The judge was removed from 46 of 49 cases between February 2014 and September 2015 in a practice known as “papering the judge.” O.C.’s Supervising Superior Court Judge Richard King is not fond of the practice and on December 3 rejected the request to disqualify Goethals from a murder case, People v. Tejeda, in a scathing 49-page ruling.   read more