Cates

Candace Cates appeals a judgment entered in favor of defendants, former California State Controller Steven Westley (the Controller), California Gambling Control Commissioner J.K. Sasaki and the California Gambling Control Commission (together with Sasaki, the Commission) and former California State Attorney General Bill Lockyer, now Edmund G. Brown, Jr. (the Attorney General, collectively with the Controller and the Commission, Defendants), on her taxpayer action seeking to compel Defendants to discharge their statutory duty to collect money derived from gambling belonging to the state from various Indian tribes. She also appeals orders (1) denying her motion to compel further responses to special interrogatories seeking financial information about various Indian tribes and (2) requiring her to return confidential documents that she allegedly misappropriated from her former employer.

In this case, we conclude that the trial court improperly granted summary judgment because Defendants have not shown, as a matter of law, that they have complied with their mandatory duties to collect money derived from gambling owed to the state. Specifically, they failed to negate Cates’s…