Not So Hard a Deadline On Posting Jury Fees

Since I've learned this rule, I always lived under an impression that the deadline to post jury fees is a "hard" deadline: one who misses it, deemed waived her/his right to a jury trial. (Cal. Code Civ. Proc., § 631(f)(5)*). When the rule was amended in the middle of 2012, some pending cases got caught mid-way with the change, leading to unexpected quirks in the local procedure. This recent decision may become handy for arguing failures to post jury fees under the new version of CCP 631.

100 California Appellate Decisions

In order to observe litigation dynamics on the state's appellate level, I took a sample scope of 100 appellate decisions (including ones from the Cal. Supreme Court, but not including Superior Court's Limited Jurisdiction's appeals). Unlike my earlier sample of 100 filed complaints at the trial-court level, which took only 3 days to fulfill, 100 appellate decisions were rendered over a span of approximately a month: my particular scope covered cases from March 26 to April 30, 2013. The results differ, as expected, since there are whole classes of cases regularly commenced in the trial court, but rarely appealed. Yet there are some similarities as well. Here are the particular results, per field:

How rare an accident may still be "foreseeable"? 1 in 641,025 years.

In a recent strict liability case, Collins v. Navistar, 214 Cal.App.4th 1486 (2013), court held that it is possible for a vehicle manufacturer to foresee an event, with an effective chance of .003―.009 per billion vehicle-miles.

Allegata Et Probata

ALLEGATA ET PROBATA 

Meaning: The things alleged must agree with the things proved.

This rule applies to the proofs presented at trial, holding that such proofs have to be corresponding with what was alleged in the pleadings. Proving a fact not alleged is disallowed as a "variance."
The rule believed to be applied strictly in the Medieval period, but got relaxed in more recent times, so that the presented proofs need only to relate to the allegations. Variances to some immaterial degree become allowed.