BILL ANALYSIS Ó AB 2747 Page 1 ASSEMBLY THIRD READING AB 2747 (Judiciary Committee) As Amended May 14, 2014 Majority vote JUDICIARY 7-0 APPROPRIATIONS 12-5 ----------------------------------------------------------------- |Ayes:|Wieckowski, Alejo, Chau, |Ayes:|Gatto, Bocanegra, | | |Dickinson, Garcia, | |Bradford, Ian Calderon, | | |Muratsuchi, Stone | |Campos, Eggman, Gomez, | | | | |Holden, Pan, Quirk, | | | | |Ridley-Thomas, Weber | | | | | | |-----+--------------------------+-----+--------------------------| | | |Nays:|Bigelow, Donnelly, Jones, | | | | |Linder, Wagner | ----------------------------------------------------------------- SUMMARY : Makes various changes to the California codes as part of the Judiciary Committee's civil omnibus bill. Specifically, this bill , among other things: 1)Restores a civil penalty for a willful violation of notary public standards of conduct that as the result of a drafting error was inadvertently repealed. 2)Updates the Evidence Code to reflect the addition of two types of evidentiary privilege that had inadvertently been omitted from the list of all relationship-based privileged communications, and corrects incorrect cross-references. 3)Removes specific references to domestic partners in the Probate Code that became obsolete when spouses and domestic partners were guaranteed the same rights and responsibilities under California law. 4)Makes technical and conforming changes to statutory provisions and statutory forms regarding claim of right to possession and prejudgment claim of right to possession. AB 2747 Page 2 5)Corrects a drafting error in SB 120 (Lowenthal), Chapter 560, Statutes of 2009, that was intended to cover all utility providers but inadvertently failed to extend those provisions to one type of special utility district. 6)Extends, for an additional five years, the sunset date for provisions requiring a car rental company to be the agent for service of process for claims against insured persons who reside outside of the United States. 7)Repeals the requirement that a confidential marriage license may be used only in the county in which it was issued. 8)Exempts a probate referee from paying a filing fee for a request for special notice when acting in his or her official capacity. 9)Removes obsolete provisions regarding personal bonds. 10)Requires an independent civil action to be filed for any dispute about the reasonableness of fees charged by a deposition officer, as specified. 11)Deletes inappropriately broad reporting requirements inadvertently assigned to the Judicial Council pursuant to the study established by AB 900 (Buchanan), Chapter 354, Statutes of 2011, and instead limits the scope of the report to the effects of AB 900 on the administration of justice. 12)Clarifies that residential leases having a security deposit provision are not by virtue of that fact barred from being signed electronically by the parties, if they so wish, under the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (UETA). AB 2747 Page 3 13)Adds bicycle motocross to the list of hazardous recreational activities under Government Code Section 831.7. 14) Clarifies that a putative spouse must be the innocent party in a voidable marriage. 15)Clarifies that the court's decision to grant a fee waiver in a case involving a conservatorship or guardianship should be based on the financial resources of the proposed conservatee or ward. 16)Includes employees among those persons a party must produce at trial upon proper notice. 17)Makes other technical corrections and clarifying changes. FISCAL EFFECT : According to the Assembly Appropriations Committee, negligible fiscal impact. COMMENTS : This bill is the Assembly Judiciary Committee's omnibus civil law bill. It incorporates over a dozen different proposals submitted by various groups seeking to make technical, clarifying, or other modest changes to civil law. In order to be included in the bill, each provision must be not so substantive as to be more appropriate for a stand-alone bill. The purpose of the omnibus bill is to increase the efficiency of the legislative process, conserve legislative resources, and eliminate the need to unnecessarily hear a number of stand-alone bills that might otherwise have to be introduced and heard separately through the legislative process. Several of the individual proposals are briefly discussed below. AB 2610 (Skinner), Chapter 562, Statutes of 2012, gives occupants in foreclosed properties the right to file the Prejudgment Claim of Right to Possession form (CP 10.5) at any time before judgment. However, there was an unfortunate but significant legislative oversight in that the bill failed to update the forms themselves to reflect the underlying changes in the law. As a result, the existing statutory forms continue to AB 2747 Page 4 provide outdated and incorrect information about the rights and procedural requirements that apply to the people who are served with these forms under the new law enacted by AB 2610. Because the forms are statutory, rather than created by the Judicial Council, legislation is needed to update the content of the forms. This bill amends the Code of Civil Procedure (CCP) Sections 415.46 and 1174.3 to update two statutory forms known as the Prejudgment Claim of Right to Possession (CP 10.5), and the Claim of Right to Possession (CP 10). The updates are necessary to conform the statutory forms, which are often served upon occupants in foreclosed properties, with the changes in the underlying law that were made when AB 2610 was chaptered in 2012. Additionally, CCP Section 1174.25 is amended to provide an additional cross-reference to the change in the law. Public Resources Code Section 21189.2, enacted by AB 900, currently requires the Judicial Council to conduct a study and "report to the Legislature, on or before January 1, 2015, on the effects of [the bill], which shall include, but not be limited to, a description of the benefits, costs, and detriments of the certification of leadership projects pursuant to this chapter." (emphasis added.) According to the Judicial Council, Senate President pro Tempore Darrell Steinberg and his staff acknowledged that this study language was inadvertently written too broadly, and deals with issues that are outside the Judicial Council's expertise and areas of experience. This bill clarifies and appropriately narrows the statutorily mandated study language to limit its focus to the impacts of the act on the administration of justice, as well as extending the deadline of the study to coincide with the new deadlines in the act that were recently extended by SB 743 (Steinberg) Chapter 386, Statutes of 2013. SB 495 (Fuller), Chapter 305, Statutes of 2011, increased the waiting period to retain unclaimed property (safe deposit box contents) of no apparent commercial value from 18 months to 'not less than seven years'. That bill also specified changes to the language in CCP Section 1565, but did not include CCP Section 1501.5 which also referenced the retention time period. According to the State Controller's Office, this was an oversight; accordingly, this bill updates CCP Section 1501.5 to reflect the correct time of retention and to be consistent with AB 2747 Page 5 CCP Section 1565. This bill amends Civil Code Section 1942.2, and Government Code Section 60371 to correct an oversight stemming from the enactment of SB 120. SB 120 changed the law regarding the notice that utility districts must provide to tenants when the utilities are shutoff, but through a legislative oversight, one type of utility district was omitted from the scope of the bill - the type of special district governed by Government Code Section 60371. Without this proposal, all utility districts are subject to one rule (articulated by SB 120), while a different rule (the pre-SB 120 rule) applies only to Government Code Section 60371-specific special districts. There is no public policy justification for continuing this discrepancy that was created by legislative oversight. This bill also restores consistency to the set of Evidence Code Sections on evidentiary privilege and specifically privileged communications by adding two types of evidentiary privilege to Evidence Code Section 917 that are included throughout relevant neighboring sections, but were inadvertently omitted from Evidence Code Section 917 due to drafting error. This bill also corrects a drafting error in AB 886 (Runner), Chapter 399, Statutes of 2007 that unintentionally removed a civil penalty for a willful violation of notary public standards of conduct. The statute previously provided for penalties of both willful and negligent conduct, but AB 886 neglected to retain the willful penalties when recasting the code sections. According to the Secretary of State, the drafting error has had the effect of tying the hands of Administrative Law Judges who now only have the option to classify these violations as negligent, which carries a lesser penalty. As a result, some judges choose to assess no penalty rather than downgrade a willful violation to the lower status of a negligent act. This bill reinstates the prior $1,500 civil penalty for willful violation of Government Code Section 8214.1 (d). Analysis Prepared by : Anthony Lew / JUD. / (916) 319-2334 FN: 0003553 AB 2747 Page 6