In California, under a rule premised on the theory of ostensible agency, a hospital may be liable for the negligence of physicians on the staff, even when such physicians are in fact independent contractors, unless the hospital has clearly notified the patient that the treating physicians are not hospital employees and there is no reason to believe the patient was unable to understand or act on the information. The required elements of ostensible agency are: "(1) conduct by the hospital that would cause a reasonable person to believe that there was an agency relationship and (2) reliance on that apparent agency relationship by the plaintiff." (Mejia v. Community Hospital of San Bernardino (2002) 99 Cal.App.4th 1448, 1457.) On June 1, 2020, the California Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District, decided the case of Wicks, et al. v. Antelope Valley Healthcare District. The court held, among other holdings, that the evidence established in the case conclusively established that the emergency room physicians were not the ostensible agents of the hospital as a matter of law....

On April 6, 2020, after decades of appeals, the Supreme Court of California finally answered the question of which exhaustion method is required under the "all sums with stacking" approach when continuous injury occurs over the course of multiple policy periods for which an insured purchased multiple layers of excess insurance. Previously the courts have held that "excess" insurance can only be reached by the insured when all other primary insurance policies across all relevant time periods have been exhausted; commonly referred to as "horizontal exhaustion." For insurers, a shift to the "vertical exhaustion" method means that "excess" insurance may now be reached once the directly underlying insurance for "the same time period" has been exhausted....