Patterico's Pontifications

3/23/2020

BREAKING: All California Trials on Hold for 60 Days

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 9:37 pm



Wow.

Criminal and civil trials were discontinued in California for at least two months after a sweeping order was issued late Monday by the state’s chief justice that aims to sharply cut down public traffic in state courthouses during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Chief Justice Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye said in her order that court facilities were “ill-equipped to effectively allow the social distancing and other public health requirements” that have been imposed across California to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus.

“Even if court facilities could allow for sufficient social distancing, the closure of schools means that many court employees, litigants, witnesses, and potential jurors cannot leave their homes to attend court proceedings because they must stay home to supervise their children,” Cantil-Sakauye said in the order.

The 60-day delay — which puts the courts in California’s 58 counties on a uniform trial delay schedule — came the same day that the presiding judge of Los Angeles Superior Court, Kevin C. Brazile, blocked public access to county courthouses except for attorneys, staff, defendants and “authorized persons,” a vague category that includes news reporters.

This is a big deal.

38 Responses to “BREAKING: All California Trials on Hold for 60 Days”

  1. Sorry, I did not get to a Respite 2 post.

    Patterico (115b1f) — 3/23/2020 @ 9:38 pm

  2. A friend of mine was in the process of jury selection when all the schools started closing and the social distancing orders were coming through. He said they had so many people ask to be dismissed due to various hardships and possible illness that the judge ended up agreeing to continue the trial. I bet there were a lot of other trials facing the same problems, as well.

    Nic (896fdf) — 3/23/2020 @ 10:00 pm

  3. Looks like a few more things on hold……

    Bill Melugin
    @BillFOXLA
    ·
    NEW: LA County Sheriff Alex Villanueva tells me gun stores are NOT essential businesses and will be forced to close in the county. He’s adding 1,300 deputies to patrol. Says 1,700 nonviolent inmates have been released from jail. That’s 10% of jail population. More 10pm @FOXLA
    __ _

    harkin (467f23) — 3/23/2020 @ 10:08 pm

  4. 16 People Sick Following Birthday Party at LA’s Trump National Golf Club
    More than a dozen people are reportedly sick after an early March event held at the fine dining restaurant of Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes, the wealthy standalone city in the southwest corner of Los Angeles County. The exclusive event, a 70th birthday party for former Rancho Palos Verdes mayor Susan Brooks, has seen 16 of its 65 attendees fall ill, with several of those cases now confirmed to be COVID-19.

    Easy Reader News was the first to report on the health scare, which stems from the event on March 8. Brooks, who has since tested positive for COVID-19, told the News that she cautioned event-goers to stay home if they felt sick in any way, and advised in a message to attendees that they keep a respectful distance throughout the event. The group included a variety of mostly older people from around Rancho Palos Verdes, including current Fourth District county supervisor Janice Hahn, who is now self-quarantining at her home. Two unidentified male guests have been hospitalized and are on ventilators, reports the News. ……

    RipMurdock (84ff09) — 3/23/2020 @ 10:11 pm

  5. On the positive side, Ragspierre will now have to stop aggressively denying the obvious.

    Make America Ordered Again (23f793) — 3/23/2020 @ 10:21 pm

  6. Right to a speedy trial?

    NJRob (4d595c) — 3/23/2020 @ 10:33 pm

  7. Welcome to the party, pal.
    Snohomish County went that way over a week ago. Hope you have enough work that you can do at home.

    Paul Montagu (df60ed) — 3/23/2020 @ 10:34 pm

  8. More than a dozen people are reportedly sick after

    Look, I realize not everyone was convinced by the article I posted earlier pointing out the specific biochemical mechanisms melatonin may act antivirally in COVID-19 and how it’s probably more than a coincidence that those demographics with the highest melatonin levels (young children, third-trimester pregnant women [there is an elevation of melatonin between the second and third trimesters], and their fetuses) emerge from COVID-19 almost unscathed…

    … melatonin has also been shown to be helpful in SARS, West Nile Virus, and several others as you can read here:

    The therapeutic effects of melatonin against viral infections, with emphasis on the Venezuelan equine encephalomyelitis (VEE), are reviewed. Melatonin has been shown to prevent paralysis and death in mice infected with the encephalomyocarditis virus and to decrease viremia. Melatonin also postpones the onset of the disease produced by Semliki Forest virus inoculation and reduces the mortality of West Nile virus-infected mice stressed by either isolation or dexamethasone injection. An increase in the host resistance to the virus via a peripheral immunostimulatory activity is considered responsible for these effects. It has also been demonstrated that melatonin protects some strains of mink against Aleutian disease, and prevents the reduction of B- and T-cells as well as Th1 cytokine secretion in mice infected with leukemia retrovirus. In VEE-infected mice, melatonin postpones the onset of the disease and death for several days and reduces the mortality rate. This protective effect seems to be due to the increase in the production of interleukin-1beta (IL-1beta), as 100% of the infected mice treated with melatonin die when IL-1beta is blocked with antimurine IL-1beta antibodies. Although melatonin administration raises serum levels of tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) and interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma), the mortality observed in neutralization experiments with the corresponding anticytokine antibodies, suggests that neither TNF-alpha nor IFN-gamma are essential for the protective effect of melatonin on murine VEE virus infection. Melatonin treatment also enhances the efficiency of immunization against the VEE virus. Reactive oxygen species have been implicated in the dissemination of this virus, and their deleterious effects may be diminished by melatonin. This indole inhibits nitric oxide synthetase activity and it is a potent scavenger of nitric oxide, which also plays an important role in the spread of the VEE virus. In conclusion, the immunomodulatory, antioxidant, and neuroprotective effects of melatonin suggest that this indole must be considered as an additional therapeutic alternative to fight viral diseases.

    Bonilla E, Valero N, Chacín-Bonilla L, Medina-Leendertz S. Melatonin and viral infections. J Pineal Res. 2004 Mar;36(2):73-9.

    So why not add the smallest tablet (300 mcg) you can routinely buy to your nightly regime and get a better night’s sleep while perhaps saving your life and the lives of those you love?

    Take your melatonin.

    You know how there is wide variance in who suffers badly from COVID-19 and to whom it isn’t a big deal?

    This could be a big reason here.

    FINALLY, there was a study that just was published just one week ago that shows researchers are at least LOOKING at melatonin in a positive light:

    Drug repurposing, representing as an effective drug discovery strategy from existing drugs, could shorten the time and reduce the cost compared to de novo drug discovery. In this study, we present an integrative, antiviral drug repurposing methodology implementing a systems pharmacology-based network medicine platform, quantifying the interplay between the HCoV–host interactome and drug targets in the human protein–protein interaction network. Phylogenetic analyses of 15 HCoV whole genomes reveal that 2019-nCoV/SARS-CoV-2 shares the highest nucleotide sequence identity with SARS-CoV (79.7%). Specifically, the envelope and nucleocapsid proteins of 2019-nCoV/SARS-CoV-2 are two evolutionarily conserved regions, having the sequence identities of 96% and 89.6%, respectively, compared to SARS-CoV. Using network proximity analyses of drug targets and HCoV–host interactions in the human interactome, we prioritize 16 potential anti-HCoV repurposable drugs (e.g., melatonin, mercaptopurine, and sirolimus) that are further validated by enrichment analyses of drug-gene signatures and HCoV-induced transcriptomics data in human cell lines. We further identify three potential drug combinations (e.g., sirolimus plus dactinomycin, mercaptopurine plus melatonin, and toremifene plus emodin) captured by the “Complementary Exposure” pattern: the targets of the drugs both hit the HCoV–host subnetwork, but target separate neighborhoods in the human interactome network. In summary, this study offers powerful network-based methodologies for rapid identification of candidate repurposable drugs and potential drug combinations targeting 2019-nCoV/SARS-CoV-2.

    Zhou, Y., Hou, Y., Shen, J. et al. Network-based drug repurposing for novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV/SARS-CoV-2. Cell Discov 6, 14 (2020).

    It’s safe. Bodies have had melatonin in them since long before we were human. We’re talking about the smallest tablet you can even buy at a supplement store! That’s a physiologic range. Why not do it and recommend it to those you love also?

    And if anyone asks, tell them Doctor Richard Neel said it’s a good idea! (see the March 20th article on KTSA’s website entitled “Area Doctor offers simple suggestion to help with COVID-19 recovery” by Don Morgan.

    Melatonin. It does a [virally infected] body good.

    Make America Ordered Again (23f793) — 3/23/2020 @ 10:34 pm

  9. Look on the bright side: At least you can still go walking in the park an hour’s drive away with hordes of oblivious citizenry ignoring the social distancing “recommendations.”

    Gryph (08c844) — 3/23/2020 @ 10:56 pm

  10. “ Look, I realize not everyone was convinced by the article I posted earlier pointing out the specific biochemical mechanisms melatonin may act antivirally in COVID-19 and how it’s probably more than a coincidence that those demographics with the highest melatonin levels (young children, third-trimester pregnant women [there is an elevation of melatonin between the second and third trimesters], and their fetuses) emerge from COVID-19 almost unscathed…”
    __ _

    I read it in the David Lat post and found it interesting. I’m in one of the more elevated risk groups so I’ll take any help I can get.

    If they said it I missed it but is there a difference in success rate for naturally occurring melatonin from diet and exposure to sunlight and that from manufactured supplements?

    I’m asking because of this in an article about natural food sources of melatonin and also its use as a sleep aid:

    “Melatonin supplements are made with synthetic ingredients in a lab or with cow urine. And though the supplements may have slight benefits, especially for people suffering with occasional insomnia, they don’t always offer long-lasting or significant results for those who struggle with sleep on a nightly basis.”

    : https://naturalsociety.com/8-foods-naturally-increase-melatonin-sleep/#ixzz6HaGFX0F9

    They also list these as good food sources of melatonin:

    “The researchers found pineapples, bananas, and oranges were able to increase melatonin presence significantly. Pineapples increased the presence of aMT6s over 266% while bananas increased levels by 180%. Oranges were able to increase melatonin by approximately 47%”

    Also:

    Oats, sweet corn, rice, tomatoes, barley.

    Bananas, oranges and pineapple juice are regular parts of my diet, I hope they help.
    _

    harkin (467f23) — 3/23/2020 @ 11:18 pm

  11. Great information Harkin. I’ll probably buy pineapple and bananas, and I’m eating an orange as I type this.

    I used those melatonin supplements for years when I worked the midnight shift, to help me sleep through the day. They, blackout curtains, and limiting blue light, seemed to make a difference in my sleep. I have to agree if your body can make the stuff that’s better.

    Dustin (b18b7a) — 3/23/2020 @ 11:26 pm

  12. On the positive side, Ragspierre will now have to stop aggressively denying the obvious.

    But you didn’t read what I said, or you are lying again. I explicitly mentioned that trials were an area that would require innovation. This order only pertains to trials, as I read our host’s reporting.

    Goverrnment is not “shut down”. There’s no reason to get hysterical. Is there?

    Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 3/24/2020 @ 5:33 am

  13. This is extremely innovative. It definitely isn’t anything like “shutting down.”

    Ragspiere, you would know a lot about lying!

    Make America Ordered Again (23f793) — 3/24/2020 @ 6:33 am

  14. I guess I’ll have to ask again…

    Are the courts “shut down”?

    Is “government shut down”?

    Is there any reason you should get hysterical?

    Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 3/24/2020 @ 6:40 am

  15. Ragspiere,

    1. You were constantly disputing, in your signature juvenile, name-calling way, those who said this was having a big affect in on the courts’ functioning. Unfortunately, even now you can’t refrain from dishonestly and moving the goalposts even though, sure, some of them were also talking about the government writ large being more shut down.

    2. I am sure that I read somewhere that the judiciary is a part of the government and that trials had something to do with that.

    I’m not panicking or getting hysterical. You’re doing your usual thing of attacking others with rhetoric instead of honestly addressing their arguments and making your own.

    I am just pointing out that they were right and you were wrong.

    I was wrong, of course, to optimistically assert that you would have to stop aggressively denying the obvious.

    Make America Ordered Again (23f793) — 3/24/2020 @ 7:07 am

  16. Was is this done for TWO Months, instead of ONE? Further, why does the Supreme Court judge have the power to do this? This seems like something the Governor or AG would have the power to do. Again, its judges acting like un-elected Kings.

    rcocean (1a839e) — 3/24/2020 @ 7:15 am

  17. Was is this done for TWO Months, instead of ONE?

    Great question.

    Further, why does the Supreme Court judge have the power to do this?

    Because she is a selfish scaredy-cat and she is panicking.

    This seems like something the Governor or AG would have the power to do. Again, its judges acting like un-elected Kings.

    Make America Ordered Again (23f793) — 3/24/2020 @ 7:21 am

  18. I’ve astutely identified you as a natural-born propagandist (i.e., liar).

    This is a tour d’main of your disgusting “skills”.

    Far from moving any goal posts, I’ve referred readers to my own posts.

    I asked a few simple, direct questions. And remember, you trolled me first thing out of the box. So, here again are my QUESTIONS (distinct from “accusations”):

    Are the courts “shut down”?

    Is “government shut down”?

    Is there any reason you should get hysterical?

    You were and are wrong to lie and otherwise distort what I’ve said. But you are a troll.

    Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 3/24/2020 @ 7:25 am

  19. Wow. I think Raggy has finally gone off the deep end. SMDH…

    Gryph (08c844) — 3/24/2020 @ 7:27 am

  20. California Supreme Court Justices are elected. The Chief Justice has supervisory power over all the California courts. It’s in the California Constitution. She probably could order all the judges to wear pink chiffon and convene court with a rendition of “The Good Ship Lollipop” but don’t quote me on that.

    nk (1d9030) — 3/24/2020 @ 7:29 am

  21. Wow. I think Raggy has finally gone off the deep end. SMDH…

    An odd comment from one who can’t see anything I say!

    How have I gone off the deep end, Moana?

    Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 3/24/2020 @ 7:30 am

  22. This will relieve me of the jury duty I was scheduled to begin on 3/30. So there’s a win.

    Colonel Haiku (ac91f9) — 3/24/2020 @ 7:38 am

  23. 22. Take the small victories where you can find them, right Colonel? 😉

    Gryph (08c844) — 3/24/2020 @ 7:41 am

  24. https://hotair.com/archives/john-s-2/2020/03/23/study-coronavirus-lingered-cruise-ship-cabins-17-days/

    Well, that ain’t good…

    Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 3/24/2020 @ 7:49 am

  25. “ She probably could order all the judges to wear pink chiffon and convene court with a rendition of “The Good Ship Lollipop.”

    They only do that in the Bay Area.

    harkin (b64479) — 3/24/2020 @ 8:07 am

  26. Patterico,

    I’m curious. To the extent you care to comment, has your office been active the last week or so? Working from home? I’m guessing that your job has lots of work outside of the courtroom even in normal times.

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 3/24/2020 @ 8:32 am

  27. harkin (467f23) — 3/23/2020 @ 10:08 pm

    By contrast, the shutdown order for Broward County [Fort Lauderdale] lists gun and ammo stores among the types of businesses considered essential enough to remain open.

    This in a county dominated by Democrats, and the one where the Parkland shooting took place.

    Kishnevi (f15403) — 3/24/2020 @ 9:25 am

  28. 60 days? Meh. The justice system in the United States is so glacial as it is, nobody going to notice.

    DCSCA (797bc0) — 3/24/2020 @ 9:28 am

  29. The order for California lists marijuana dispensaries as essential.

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 3/24/2020 @ 9:34 am

  30. The order for California lists marijuana dispensaries as essential.

    Colorado is the same, but only medical marijuana dispensaries. Liquor stores and recreational dispensaries are not.

    Make America Ordered Again (23f793) — 3/24/2020 @ 9:36 am

  31. @26. FYI, My sis-in-law is an attorney w/t San Diego County court system and was pegged an ‘essential worker’ and had to go to her office at the court house so ‘home work’ was out; not sure where it stands w/this news but she’ll have the office paper work to deal with all the same. It has cause her to ‘self-isolate’ from family in the high-risk range given where she works and the human traffic she gets exposed to on the job. Sorta have to play it by ear day-to-day.

    DCSCA (797bc0) — 3/24/2020 @ 9:37 am

  32. I’m glad your sister is pro-actively responsible and considerate of others, DCSCA.

    Make America Ordered Again (23f793) — 3/24/2020 @ 9:38 am

  33. FYI, as a civil litigation attorney, I can tell you that there will be pressure on litigants to resolve cases via alternative dispute resolution (mediation, arbitration, simple negotiation, and “private trials”.

    I dunno why a Kuhlifornia civil matter could not be tried before the bench, as are many in my experience. I know that in some jurisdictions, a criminal defendant can elect a bench trial, as well.

    Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 3/24/2020 @ 10:04 am

  34. Colorado is the same, but only medical marijuana dispensaries.

    It may be such in CA, too, if there are any left.

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 3/24/2020 @ 11:15 am

  35. LA County Sheriff orders gun stores to close

    https://www.foxla.com/news/la-county-sheriff-orders-gun-stores-to-close-adds-1300-deputies-to-patrol

    Seems like an infringement to me. Will they start censoring the news, too?

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 3/24/2020 @ 11:20 am

  36. Trump is now saying “by Easter” (April 12).

    https://www.axios.com/trump-coronavirus-restrictions-c3da2d28-b761-4b62-b6d6-734c059c6dba.html

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 3/24/2020 @ 11:21 am

  37. Colorado is the same, but only medical marijuana dispensaries. Liquor stores and recreational dispensaries are not.

    DENVER, Colo. (KRDO) — Denver Mayor Michael Hancock announced a stay-at-home order Monday afternoon, closing all non-essential services. The order is set to go into effect at 5 p.m. Tuesday and initially included liquor stores and recreational marijuana dispensaries.

    Almost immediately, long lines formed as residents flocked to their nearest retailer.

    The City of Denver soon after announced an amendment to the stay-at-home order, now allowing liquor stores and dispensaries to stay open so long as they practice “extreme physical distancing.”

    https://krdo.com/news/local-news/2020/03/23/denver-liquor-stores-dispensaries-exempt-from-stay-at-home-order/

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 3/24/2020 @ 11:23 am

  38. The Chief Justice’s order merely confirms the reality that was already overtaking the court system out here. It does give cover for attorneys and parties in cases bumping up against various statutory deadlines. So for example if you’re a plaintiff’s attorney with a case where the five-year deadline to go to trial is looming, the Chief Justice just gave you two more months to figure something out. Fortunately not many cases take that long any more, although there are a lot of appellate decisions from the bad old days when all the courts were “master calendar” courts about whether a plaintiff’s excuse for not meeting the five year deadline was valid.

    But the reality is that judges and court clerks don’t want to be there and don’t want attorneys and parties and jurors and witnesses parading into their courtrooms right now. I had two motions unilaterally continued by the judges last week before there were any system-wide orders here in LA. And no one minded — attorneys and parties etc didn’t want to be in court either because everyone is suspicious of everyone else right now. Order or no order, trials were not going to be happening anyway, but the order does give us some statewide uniformity. For the non-trial proceedings that do go forward, people who aren’t familiar with CourtCall ought to learn about it fast.

    RL formerly in Glendale (40f5aa) — 3/24/2020 @ 2:05 pm


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