California appellate practice is barbaric and systemically unjust. It is so for numerous reasons many of which are related to the sheer arrogance and bigotry of justices who conduct the review supported by rules which codify such historical bigotry.
Since at least the Victorian 1800's, appellate justices have used the very vague and colloquial "light" metaphor, as in the appellate rule to "consider the evidence in a light most favorable to the judgment" of the trial court. This is part of the substantial evidence standard of review to be used by appellate panels.
California's appellate practice interpretation of the "substantial evidence" standard of review adds one more word to create the phrase "any substantial evidence". That little prepended "any" appears to be the anchor of a unique self-indulging deviation from national norms of justice that unconstitutionally prefers to place facts which support the party that lost at trial in the darkest penumbra of a total eclipse.
In combination with other rules of review and court, the gross result is a massive set of California appellate opinions systemically licensed by the State to libel the party that lost at the trial level.
Simply stated, by the general practice of California appellate panels unconstitutionally takes everything said by the winning party as true and completely ignores the exculpatory evidence put on by the party that lost. California opinions are therefore heavily populated with false statements stated as fact which every reasonable trier of fact would find absurd and that even the trial judge did not find.
Justice Elkington, in his lengthly and heavily researched dissenting opinion in People v. Blum (1973) 35 Cal. App.3d 515 [110 Cal. Rptr. 833] condemned such practice as contrary to the law of California. He notes, for example, cases which state that the appellate court need only determine whether there is "any substantial evidence, contradicted or uncontradicted" (35 Cal. App.3d at p. 522), and other cases which indicate that the court should not consider that part of the evidence which would "tend to defeat" the judgment below (Id.). SCOTUS later decided Jackson v. Virginia, supra, 443 U.S. 307 which caused the California Supreme Court to revisit Elkington's dissent in the later People v. Johnson, 606 P. 2d 738 - Cal: Supreme Court 1980.
Regrettably, People v. Johnson addressed the issue obliquely rather than head on, and without enough leverage to reset California judicial momentum on the true path of justice which Justice Elkington so eloquently recharted. Despite being an opinion of the California Supreme Court an attempt to cite People v. Johnson's restatement to an appellate panel can result in an instinctively disobedient "I don't want to hear it." to avoid the controlling authority of the Supreme Court.