Justice Natalie Stone

A personal voter-guide blog recommends retaining Stone, finding no ethics or misconduct issues; its discussion relies on "Google AI" summaries rather than primary records.

• Recommendation: Retain (Yes).
• Notes nearly a decade on the LA Superior Court, including a juvenile dependency calendar at Edelman Children's Court.
• Notes ten years at Munger, Tolles & Olson and law-school legal-aid work with El Centro Legal.

LAist's explainer on Court of Appeal retention races lists Stone with her appointing governor and State Bar evaluation rating; it offers no assessment of her record.

• Lists Stone as an associate justice appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
• Reports a 2023 State Bar evaluation (JNE) rating of "Well qualified."
• Explains that retention votes are yes/no and that no California appellate justice has lost a retention election since the 1930s, per a state analysis.

The Secretary of State's official list of judicial contests for November 3, 2026 includes a retention question for Associate Justice Natalie Stone, Second District, Division Seven.

• Ballot question: "Shall Associate Justice NATALIE STONE be elected to the office for the term provided by law?"
• Listed under Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District (Los Angeles, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura).

A ballotscope compilation of Justice Stone's published opinions listed on courts.ca.gov from October 2024 to October 2026: 13 authored opinions and 1 separate opinion (a dissent in People v. Tourville, May 2026). It covers published opinions only; most appellate decisions are unpublished.

• Authored: 13; separate opinions: 1 (dissent, P. v. Tourville, 2026-05-05).
• Mostly civil and public law: municipal labor and pensions (two AFSCME v. City of L.A. matters, one with a modified version), rent control (Cal. Apartment Assn. v. City of Pasadena), climate regulation (Western States Petroleum Ass'n v. Cal. Air Resources Bd.), insurance (Nargizyan v. State Farm; Hughes v. Farmers), and suits against the City (Carranza v. City of Los Angeles).
• Criminal: two 'P. v.' captions (Taft, Rockhill); plus a writ proceeding (Schneider v. Superior Court) and mass-tort fee litigation (Pruchnik v. JCCP4621 Common Benefit Com.).

Justice Stone's opinion for a unanimous Division Seven panel upholding a labor-board order that Los Angeles make city employees whole for pension losses after it ended pension 'Reciprocity' with the Department of Water and Power without bargaining over the effects. It holds the City's Employee Relations Board may order make-whole relief, the remedy was within its discretion, it did not violate separation of powers, and the unions are owed attorney fees.

• The City conceded it had to bargain over the effects of ending Reciprocity; it challenged only the remedy.
• The court defers to the board's reading of its own ordinance unless 'clearly erroneous' and reviews its remedy for abuse of discretion.
• The panel's 2025 AFSCME I ruling (no vested right to Reciprocity) does not bar relief: a right to bargain over effects is distinct from a vested pension right, and the remedy was temporary, lasting until agreement or impasse.
• No separation-of-powers violation because the order does not invalidate the ordinance or impair the City Council's functions; fees affirmed under Code Civ. Proc. § 1021.5, plus fees on appeal.

Long document: only the first 45,000 characters were summarized.

Stone's opinion reverses summary judgment for State Farm in a homeowner's water-leak claim, holding a jury could find the leak was sudden rather than "continuous or repeated" and that State Farm's investigation was unreasonable.

• Insurer bears the burden of proving an exclusion applies; exclusions are "interpreted narrowly."
• State Farm offered no evidence of how long the leak lasted; its engineer could not estimate when it started.
• State Farm retained its engineering firm only after its own adjuster had concluded the loss looked covered, which a jury "could reasonably question."
• Triable issues remain on bad faith and on punitive damages, including whether a claims team manager was a "managing agent."
• The opinion distinguishes Freedman, Brown, and Mojica, where undisputed evidence showed long-running leaks.

Stone dissents from a ruling that a trial court abused its discretion by denying mental health diversion to a veteran charged with domestic violence; she argues courts may weigh public and victim safety beyond the statute's "super strike" bar.

• The majority (Feuer, J.) held safety-based denial was improper once the court found no unreasonable risk of a super strike, and reversed.
• Stone relies on the statute's text ("may, in its discretion") and on 2022 Senate and Assembly committee analyses to argue the Legislature preserved broad discretion.
• She says other courts focus on "increased diversion" and "neglect the corresponding goal of 'protecting public safety.'"
• She argues probation with the same treatment was a legitimate option, warning that faulting it "could lead to more defendants with mental illness in prison."
• She draws on Los Angeles trial-court practice to say diversion progress reports give less oversight than probation.

Stone's short opinion corrects a defendant's custody credit by two days, holding the trial court wrongly believed it lacked jurisdiction and clarifying the division's own earlier Singleton decision.

• Credits for noncontinuous custody must be aggregated before computing conduct credit, giving 400 days, not 398.
• Penal Code section 1237.1 gives trial courts jurisdiction to fix credit errors while an appeal is pending.
• The court explains that Singleton (2025), which barred correcting long-final sentences without statutory authority, did not reach this situation.
• A footnote flags as "ambiguous" whether section 1237.1 jurisdiction survives after an appeal ends, without deciding it.

Stone's opinion for a unanimous panel largely upholds Pasadena's voter-approved rent-control charter amendment (Measure H) but strikes two provisions as preempted by state law.

• Measure H was a permissible charter amendment, not a revision barred to the initiative process; the court says it "must resolve all doubts in favor of the initiative process."
• Reserving 7 of 11 rental-board seats for tenants does not violate the state ban on property qualifications for office, which the court reads as barring conditions on real-property ownership, an issue of first impression.
• The tenant-majority board survives a facial federal equal protection challenge under rational-basis review.
• The requirement that landlords pay relocation aid to tenants displaced by lawful rent increases is preempted by the Costa-Hawkins Act.
• An extra notice-and-cure step before evictions for nonpayment is preempted by the Unlawful Detainer Act timeline.

The court's official profile of Stone covers her path from big-firm litigator and appellate staff attorney to nine years as a trial judge and, since May 2024, a Division Seven justice.

• Confirmed unanimously by the Commission on Judicial Appointments in May 2024 after Gov. Newsom nominated her.
• Clerked for Judge A. Wallace Tashima (Ninth Circuit); 10 years of complex civil litigation at Munger, Tolles & Olson.
• Five years as appellate court attorney to Justice Thomas Willhite (Second District, Division Four).
• Appointed to LA Superior Court by Gov. Jerry Brown in July 2015; presided over juvenile dependency and criminal matters for nine years.
• Founded LA's Food from the Bar drive, which the profile says has raised over $8 million.
• Member of the California Judges Association Appellate Committee.