John Higginbotham

Last year, Higginbotham scored big in a case that had some motorists seeing red.

In a published opinion, an appellate court for the first time upheld red-light camera enforcement, ruling that photographs of drivers running red lights are legitimate evidence in court. People v. Goldsmith, 203 Cal.App.4th 1515 (2012).

The case is now being considered by the state Supreme Court.

"This affects everyone with a driver's license," said Higginbotham, who on behalf of Best Best & Krieger LLP represented the city of Inglewood in the matter.

One of his biggest challenges in the case involved the constitutional right to confront one's accuser.

"With red lights, your accuser is a machine," said Higginbotham, who recently left the law firm to become assistant city attorney in Corona. "People have a problem with that on an emotional level, and you've got to get over that threshold to get into the legal issues."

Higginbotham likens the cameras to a Breathalyzer used to detect a motorist's blood alcohol level.

"A Breathalyzer won't get up on a witness stand, but technicians will be able to take that data and say that person is intoxicated," he said.

In another significant matter, an appellate court decided for the first time that trial judges can use the state's anti-SLAPP statute to strike a portion of a cause of action while leaving intact certain other arguments. City of Colton v. Singletary, 206 Cal.App.4th 751 (2012).

The ruling stemmed from a case involving Higginbotham's client, the city of Colton, in a dispute with developer Gaylor Singletary Singletary had pleaded guilty in 2003 to paying almost $5,000 to a council member to persuade the city to build millions of dollars in infrastructure to benefit his property.

Five years later, Singletary sued the city in an effort to force it to honor an alleged 1999 contract he had with the city to build the infrastructure.

The city countersued in 2010 with a number of claims, and later that year a San Bernardino County Superior Court judge granted an anti-SLAPP motion by Singletary, tossing out two causes of action of the city's complaint.

The matter wound up before the 4th District Court of Appeal, which reinstated the two causes of action while stripping certain allegations.

The implications of the appellate court's ruling are "huge," Higginbotham said, and it makes new law where SLAPP now can be used to challenge individual allegations within a cause of action.

"It opens the door to a much broader use of the SLAPP statute than has been available," he said. "The court recognized the unique facts of this case and that it was appropriate to preserve the cause of action while striking the offending allegations."

- PAT BRODERICK