Schrader Cellars, LLC v. Robert Roach, Jr.

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

SCHRADER CELLARS, LLC, Nos. 23-15862 23-15990 Plaintiff-counter-defendant- Appellee / Cross-Appellant, D.C. No. 3:21- cv-01431-SK v.

ROBERT M. ROACH, Jr., OPINION

Defendant-counter-claimant- Appellant / Cross-Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of California Sallie Kim, Magistrate Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted July 15, 2024 San Francisco, California

Filed February 21, 2025

Before: Milan D. Smith, Jr., Mark J. Bennett, and Anthony D. Johnstone, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Bennett SCHRADER CELLAR, LLC V. ROACH

SUMMARY *

California State Law

The panel (1) reversed the district court’s summary judgment in favor of Schrader Cellars, Inc., a wine company, (a) on Cellars’s claim seeking declaratory relief that Robert M. Roach, a Texas attorney, did not have any ownership interest in Cellars and (b) on four counterclaims brought by Roach; and (2) affirmed the district court’s judgment after a jury trial on Cellars’s claim for breach of fiduciary duty. Roach claimed to have entered into…