4DCA Division 3 Oral Argument - 2025/12/18 - Dec 18, 2025

argument

4DCA Division 3 Oral Argument - 2025/12/18

California Fourth District Court of Appeal, Division Three 56 min 1 speaker 8 chapters transcribed 7 days ago official recording ↗

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What is the opening statement and who are the judges on the panel?

Unknown 2:48

Good

Thomas Delaney 2:59

morning. Welcome to the Cruz Reynoso courthouse. I'm Justice Thomas Delaney. To my right is Justice Martha Gooding. To my left, Judge Julianne Bancroft. We have two matters on calendar today. Both will be heard by this panel. The first one is Lopez versus City of Santa Ana.

James Trucksaw 3:28

Good morning, Your Honors. James Trucks on behalf of the defendant responding to the Santa

Thomas Delaney 3:36

Ana. Mr. Counts, Mr. Lee, good morning. Mr. Counts, if you would take the podium, restate your appearance just so the microphone gets it, and let us know if you would, if you would like to reserve any of your 15 minutes for response.

Stephen Counts 3:50

Good morning, Your Honors. Stephen Counts on behalf of the plaintiff and appellant, Bilha Lopez. I would reserve three minutes of time

Thomas Delaney 3:58

for

Stephen Counts 3:59

my rebuttal.

Thomas Delaney 3:59

Very well. You may proceed.

Stephen Counts 4:02

Well, good morning, Your Honors, and may it please the Court. We are here for one reason and one reason only. That is because the trial court did something that a trial court should never do in ruling on a motion for summary judgment. And that is the trial court put itself in the place of the trier of fact. When presented with two different or differing interpretations of certain evidence, Your Honors, the trial court did one of two things. It disregarded the evidence from one side or chose to adopt the interpretation of that evidence as presented by only one side. Rather than admitting that there was a disputed issue of material fact that was created by adopting by the presentation of the two opposing interpretations of the evidence.

Stephen Counts 5:02

The court rather chose to adopt a singular interpretation of that evidence and go with it at the exclusion of the disputed issue of material fact that was clearly presented by numerous pieces of evidence that we'll get into in a moment. Now, this is so important because the law is very clear on this issue. As cited in the appellant's opening brief, page 11 and 12, and I'll quote, the judicial function on summary judgment focuses on finding issues, not determining them. That was from the Shively v. Dye Creek Cattle Company case, page 1627. Likewise, in the summary judgment context, the evidence must be incapable of supporting a judgment for the losing party in order to validate summary judgment. Thus, even though it may appear that a trial court took a reasonable view of the evidence, summary judgment cannot properly be affirmed unless a contrary view would be unreasonable as a matter of law in the circumstances presented.

Stephen Counts 6:18

And that's taken from the... Sandell versus Taylor Listing Inc. case, page 308, also cited in plaintiff's, appellant's opening brief. Now, the fact that the court did this was the sole reason that the court decided against my client. It wasn't for lack of evidence. It was for lack of considering, consideration, proper consideration of that evidence. And the way that the court did that, that has been set forth in our appellant's opening brief. And I'll go through five different ways that the court failed to properly consider disputed issues of material fact. Number one, and by the way, this was appellant's opening brief beginning page 40, I believe. The court flatly ignored disputed evidence presented by Mr. Lopez in favor of adopting its own singular interpretation of the evidence in five different ways.

Stephen Counts 7:22

First of all, the trial court ignored evidence that the city, in this case the city of Santa Ana, expressly refused to accommodate Ms. Lopez. Evidence was presented by Ms. Lopez that there was a direct refusal to accommodate that was put in writing AND IT WAS DOCUMENTED IN THE CITY'S OWN DOCUMENTS, OMAR CASTRO'S DOCUMENTS. IT WAS A COPY AND PASTE OF A CERTAIN EMAIL FROM THE PUBLIC WORKS DIVISION STATING IN AUGUST OF 2021 THAT BILHA LOPEZ, AFTER SHE SENT WORK STATUS REPORTS THAT SET WORK RESTRICTIONS, At that point, the Public Works Division sent back a response and said, we won't accommodate. We won't accommodate. We want to set expectations, was their quote, and we want to set boundaries. And some of those boundaries were, for example, she wasn't going to be able to take leave or have any time off for the next six months if she came back to work.