SANTA ANA - The defendants involved in the Mexican Mafia trials were about as tough as they come. But they also were human, a ...

Focus Column - Litigation - By Gregg A. Farley - Suppose you represent a large corporate client that discovers an accounting f...

Focus Column - Real Estate Law - By Robert C. Barnes - If you were listening carefully on the last Friday in March 2004, you m...

Book Review - 'Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Barlett' (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux 2004) - By Brent Staples...

Forum Column - By Philip Smucker - As the preliminary evidence suggests, the American public should be prepared for the likeli...

Notebook - By Dennis Pfaff - SAN FRANCISCO - Dugongs, by all accounts, are gentle creatures, largely content to munch sea gras...

LOS ANGELES - Services have been held for Alan Carter, the Los Angeles deputy district attorney who prosecuted Heidi Fleiss, t...

HAYWARD - Since taking the Alameda County bench 12 years ago, Judge Brenda Harbin-Forte has not shied away from taking unpopul...

WASHINGTON - With apologies to T.S. Eliot, April is not the cruelest month. This year, at least for Supreme Court aficionados,...

WASHINGTON - The latest round of debate on proposals to split the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals took place in the Senate o...

SAN FRANCISCO - With jurors waiting in the wings, lawyers Wednesday settled a lawsuit against Berkeley landlord Lakireddy Bali...

SAN FRANCISCO - An Alameda County judge has thrown out a challenge to the Berkeley school district's desegregation policy, rul...

LOS ANGELES - Silvia Saucedo is stepping down from the Los Angeles Police Commission to become a commissioner with the city's ...

SAN FRANCISCO - A San Francisco appellate court threw out a landmark $21.7 million judgment against a tobacco company Wednesda...

LOS ANGELES - The resounding defeat by Inglewood voters of a Wal-Mart initiative to build a megastore is unlikely to deter the...

LOS ANGELES - A Palm Springs homeowners association acted unreasonably in ordering a ban on pets five years after a veterinari...

Forum Column - By William J. Aceves - Should victims of genocide and other violent crimes have the right to seek redress for t...

Focus Column - Appellate Law - By Jill Faulkner McNeal and James M. Harris - Attorneys take advantage of the right to oral arg...

Forum Column - By Jonathan D. Lewis - It is axiomatic that the compassion of any government can be measured by the extent to w...

Book Review - "The Best Awful," Carrie Fisher (Simon & Schuster 2003) - By John Shepard Wiley Jr. - It's a painful thing t...

LOS ANGELES - After a grueling weekend of competition, the San Marcos High School mock-trial team from Santa Barbara County wo...

SAN FRANCISCO - A major Solano County automobile seller will pay $550,000 to seven former employees of Afghani descent who cla...

SAN FRANCISCO - Henry Welland Howard Jr., the civic-minded founding partner of San Francisco's Howard, Rice, Nemerovski, Canad...

LOS ANGELES - A public memorial service for former U.S. District Judge Harry L. Hupp will take place Thursday at the federal c...

SAN FRANCISCO - Francis P. Bassios, nationally recognized for his contributions to attorney regulation for the State Bar of Ca...

SAN FRANCISCO - Attorney Maureen Kallins appeared rude and scornful to Alameda County Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Horner in 2...

SAN FRANCISCO - A pledge transportation planners made more than 20 years ago to boost Bay Area mass transit ridership is not a...

SACRAMENTO - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday appointed Deputy Attorney General Evelyn Matteucci as general counsel and d...

LOS ANGELES - A defendant cannot be convicted twice for stealing from two bedrooms in the same apartment, a state appellate co...

SAN FRANCISCO - Appellate Justice Vance W. Raye has been elected chairman of the state Commission on Judicial Performance. ...