Metropolitan News-Enterprise

 

Tuesday, September 18, 2001

 

Page 1

 

Mallano Assigned to Sit on State High Court Next Month

 

By a MetNews Staff Writer

 

Court of Appeal Justice Robert Mallano of this district’s Div. One will sit as a temporary justice of the Cali­fornia Supreme Court during a special calendar next month.

Mallano will join the high court for Robert Clarence Taylor’s death penalty appeal. Taylor, nicknamed T-Bone, was sentenced to death in 1992 for the 1986 killing of an Anaheim woman who was shot during the theft of her husband’s Corvette.

People v. Taylor is one of four cases to be heard when the court sits at the Old Orange County Courthouse in Santa Ana on Oct. 4. Prior to the first case, People v. Mooc, 82 Cal.App.4th 636, there will be a special ceremony honoring the 100th anniversaries of the opening of that courthouse and of the founding of the Orange County Bar Association.

Presiding Justice Mildred L. Lillie of this district’s Div. Seven will sit in Mooc. Chief Justice Ronald M. George invited Lillie to sit during the October calendar after she removed herself from a case heard earlier this month, citing a schedule conflict.

In Mooc, the court will be reviewing a Fourth District, Div. Three ruling that overturned a conviction for battering a Santa Ana police officer. The panel said the conviction was tainted because the officer’s personnel file wasn’t produced in response to a discovery order.

This will be the 20th sitting on the high court for Lillie, the state’s longest-serving  bench officer. It will be the first for Mallano, who was elevated to the Court of Appeal last year. 

Chief Justice Ronald M. George has assigned Court of Appeal justices to sit on the Supreme Court on a rotating basis as a result of the June death of Justice Stanley Mosk. Besides Mallano and Lillie, Justices Daniel Kolkey of the Third District and Alex C. McDonald and James M. McIntyre of the Fourth District’s Div. One are to serve next month. 

Kolkey and McDonald will sit in Ortega v. K-Mart Corporation, 83 Cal.App.4th 175, in which the court is being asked to overturn a ruling by this district’s Div. One.

That panel ruled last year that a plaintiff who slips on a foreign substance, and establishes that the party in charge of the premises failed to inspect floors at regular intervals, is entitled to an inference that the substance was on the floor long enough for the defendant to have discovered it.

The case requires two temporary justices because Justice Janice Rogers Brown is not participating.

McIntyre will sit in Utility Cost Management v. Indian Wells Water District, 82 Cal.App.4th 231. The high court took the case after the Fourth District’s Div. Two ruled that Govern­ment Code Sec. 66022, a 120-day statute of limitations for actions challenging certain fees, does not apply to an action for refund of excessive capacity charges pursuant to Secs. 54999.3 and 54999.4.

Mooc will heard during the morning session, following the anniversary ceremony. Participants in that ceremony will include Orange Superior Court Presiding Judge Robert C. Jameson, state Sen. Joe Dunn, D-Garden Grove, Orange County Board of Supervisors Chair Cynthia Coad, and OCBA President Danni Murphy.

The remaining cases will be heard during the afternoon, beginning at 1:30 p.m.

 

Copyright 2001, Metropolitan News Company