Justice Cole Blease Cover Up: Capable of Repetition, Yet Evading Review - A Lawsplainer

3rd District Court of Appeal Justice Cole Blease misuses legal doctrine of "mootness" and plays dumb to the principle of "capable of repetition, yet evading review" in order to dismiss an appeal involving very serious misconduct by a Sacramento County judge with a long history of priors. A California Courts Comedy Lawsplainer.

The dusty case law books behind Justice Cole Blease are also used at UC Berkeley School of Law, where the judge went to law school. The books contain several hundred instances of the phrase "capable of repetition, yet evading review," a basic appellate law doctrine taught in all law schools. Blease apparently cut class that day because he pretends to have never heard of it.

A search of Google Scholar case law for the phrase "capable of repetition, yet evading review" returns 5,730 results. That search result includes federal case law. Limiting the search to only California cases, the search returns 177 instances. Either way, "capable of repetition, yet evading review" is a relatively common phrase in court rulings and opinions written by judges. But what does it mean and why has Justice Cole Blease apparently never heard of it?

The short answer is that because Judge Matthew Gary broke the law and Cole Blease is a mandated reporter of judges who break the law and, well, reporting judges who break the law involves paperwork and Cole Blease doesn't like paperwork, soooo, appeal dismissed. Sound confusing?   We'll explain soon...