New Division 3 presiding justice faces voters with record of rulings that cut both ways

Since early summer, Justice Rashida A. Adams has kept what she calls the "mega list," tracking every appeal assigned to the 2nd District Court of Appeal's Division Three, so the oldest cases get decided first.

With Presiding Justice Lee Smalley Edmon retired, Adams, an associate justice since 2023, had been running the division, Edmon said at Adams' Aug. 20 confirmation hearing.

The commission unanimously confirmed her appointment by Gov. Gavin Newsom. If voters retain her Nov. 3, she will serve the remainder of Edmon's term, through Jan. 6, 2031.

"She works harder than pretty much anyone I know," Edmon said. The praise came from the justice whose majority opinion in a 2024 lemon law case drew one of Adams' sharpest dissents.

The division's justices had tried to recruit Adams years earlier, when she was a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge. She declined, Edmon said, because she wanted more "boots on the ground" experience first.

Justice Anne H. Egerton, who is also leaving the division, said Adams' edits improve the opinions other justices draft. "The end product is so much better when Rashida is on the panel," she said.

Adams told the commission she wants to share more data with justices and research attorneys "to help us all improve and see where we can do better."

Edmon wrote the majority opinion in Carver v. Volkswagen Group of America (2024), holding that Volkswagen defeated a lessee's warranty claims by promptly offering to repurchase his car, even though he refused the offer's confidentiality requirement.

Adams dissented. "Offering to settle a lemon law claim is not necessarily the same as complying with the Act," she wrote. Letting a manufacturer withhold restitution by "insisting on the consumer's agreement to an extraneous term the statute permits, but does not require," she wrote, "would seem to be entirely at odds with the Act's consumer protective purpose." The state Supreme Court declined review.

A man serving 50 years to life for a murder he committed at 17 argued that excluding him from a juvenile resentencing law violated equal protection. The attorney general conceded the point.

Writing for the court in People v. Thompson (2025), Adams rejected the claim, holding that the court "must independently address the merits" of the arguments, "which are questions of law, irrespective of the Attorney General's concession." The state Supreme Court is holding the case pending its decision in People v. Munoz, S290828.

An injured worker lost an award of continuing home health care in a second Adams opinion now before the high court, which granted review in January. Writing in Illinois Midwest Insurance Agency v. Workers' Compensation Appeals Board (2025), she held that utilization review and independent medical review are the exclusive means of deciding whether ongoing treatment is medically necessary.

After Gov. Jerry Brown appointed her to the Superior Court in 2017, Adams heard 20 to 30 dependency cases a day in Monterey Park. "Considering the issues on appeal is a lot different from being on the bench and being the first-line decision maker," she told the Daily Journal in 2018.

In In re C.L. (2025) 116 Cal.App.5th 53, she wrote for the court in upholding a finding that the Indian Child Welfare Act did not apply. Nothing in the law, she wrote, requires the agency "to report verbatim a social worker's questions to extended family members."

Dependency lawyers described her in 2018 as even-tempered and analytical. "Even when she rules against me, I can see the reasons she did so," said Marc Leftwich of the Children's Law Center of California.

A Hayward native, Adams graduated from Yale Law School and began her career at Bernabei & Katz PLLC, handling plaintiff-side employment discrimination and whistleblower litigation. She joined Caldwell Leslie Newcombe Pettit in 2005 and the Court of Appeal as a research attorney in 2008.

In 2018, she said the most gratifying moments on the dependency bench came when families resolved the problems that brought them there.

"I have a lot of hope for them," she said.