Legal News and Appellate Tips

After the record is filed on appeal, you no longer have an absolute right to dismiss the appeal. So if you decide that the the appeal is not worth the risk of attorneys’ fees or bad precedent, you have to request a dismissal. And last month, the Court of Appeal cautioned that if you wait until the court issues its tentative opinion, it’s probably going to be too late. My plea was: not many courts do litigants the favor of issuing tentatives, so please don’t abuse it. Requesting dismissal after an unfavorable tentative risks ruining it for the rest of us.

But the court in Northgate Gonzalez, LLC v. Realm Real Estate, LLC (D4d2 Jun. 16, 2023 No. E078106) 2023 WL 4042678 (nonpub. opn.) didn’t seem to mind. The trial court entered a preliminary injunction of a development project. After two-and-a-half years on appeal, the Court of Appeal issued a tentative opinion. But before oral argument, the trial court made its injunction permanent, thus mooting the appeal. So Realm requested dismissal, and the Court of Appeal granted it.

Realm already filed a new notice of appeal from the permanent injunction. (No indication which way the Court of Appeal’s tentative went, though.)

Takeaway: If you are appealing from a preliminary injunction, consider also file a petition for a writ of mandate. Otherwise, you might go through two years of briefing only to find your appeal is moot.

The holding in the published opinion in Blizzard Energy, Inc. v. Shaefers (D2d6 Nov. 29, 2022) 85 Cal.App.5th 802 is that a frivolous cross-complaint counts toward the five frivolous lawsuits an in pro per litigant may file under Code of Civil Procedure section 391 before being deemed a vexatious litigant. The trial court had refused to declare Shaefers a vexatious litigant because one of his lawsuits was a cross-complaint and the trial court thought that didn’t count. It does count.

But how did Blizzard convince the court to grant review of the order? Parting ways with a First District opinion from earlier this year, the Second District here held that an order declaring a person to be a vexatious litigant is the equivalent of an injunction. And injunction orders are appealable under section 904.1. So the Blizzard court held the order was appealable.

My view: I’m not so sure. Orders that restrict or require actions in the real world are different from orders that restrict or require actions in court world. Orders requiring a corporation to pay dividends? Injunction, of course, thus appealable. Orders requiring a corporation to produce documents? Also an injunction? Not a chance.

Yet what is the difference? The only difference I can detect is one affects the real world, and the other affects court world. Orders governing conduct in court world are not going to be considered injunctions. So consider this holding involving vexatious-litigant determinations a one-off.

There is a high frustration quotient in defending against judgment enforcement. There is supposed to be an automatic stay of orders on appeal, but in practice this is wishful thinking. So you may have to do what the aggrieved party did in Merritt v. Specialized Loan Servicing, LLC (D6 Aug. 11, 2022 No. H048463) 2022 WL 3274131: file a motion to enforce the stay.

Only, don’t call it a “motion to enforce a stay.” As the Merritt court noted, an order denying enforcement of an automatic stay is not listed as among the appealable orders in Code of Civil Procedure section 904.1. Instead, file it as an application for a temporary restraining order or a preliminary injunction. It’s the same thing, and denials are appealable under section 904.1.

The vexatious litigant in Marriage of Deal (D1d3 Jun. 21, 2022) no. A164185 (nonpub. opn.) is not a very sympathetic figure. The ex-husband, Thomas Deal, having filed 12 appeals and seven writ petitions after his divorce proceedings years ago, continued filing meritless actions and appeals that made “implicit threats against various members of the California judiciary and the State Bar.” Thomas, the court observes, now “stands alone on the silent battleground rattling his saber.”

No surprise, then that the trial court declared him a vexatious litigant. And once a court declares a litigant to be vexatious, Code of Civil Procedure sections 391 and 391.7 prevent the litigant from filing new litigation without obtaining permission from the presiding judge.

So Thomas requested permission. And it was denied. And so Thomas, going for a baker’s dozen, filed his 13th appeal from the denial.

But surprisingly, the court held that the prefiling denial under section 391 is not an appealable order. This is directly opposite published authority that a prefiling order under section 391.7 against a vexatious litigant “meets the definition of an injunction.” (Luckett v. Panos (2008) 161 Cal.App.4th 77, 90.)

Prof. Shaun Martin, though agreeing Thomas’s appeal was frivolous, worries about denying appellate review: “We don't generally let a single judge decide things once and for all without any right to review whatsoever.”

After Jeff quizzes Tim on a bit of appellate esoterica about the automatic 15-day default extension for appellate briefs, the co-hosts discuss whether appellate justices modulate their approaches to sympathetic cases. The conversation also covers recent cases and news involving:

• An appeal that became moot due to pending litigation
• One federal judge issues a nationwide injunction against the CDC mask mandate, and another federal judge sounds off against nationwide injunctions
• Law firm sued for alleged Unruh Act abuse
• SLAPP suits and... SMACC suits?

Nosing out whether an order is appealable can be difficult. But we know injunctions are appealable because they are listed explicitly in Code of Civil Procedure section 904.1, the appealability statute. But a preliminary injunction issued by an arbitrator is not. They are not a final “award,” and thus not appealable. That is the holding of *Kirk v. Ratner* (D2d7 Feb. 10, 2022) --- Cal.Rptr.3d --- (2022 WL 405422).

The parties settled their show business dispute, agreeing to confidentiality. Worried that Kirk would breach confidentiality, the movie executives initiated arbitration. The arbitrator issued a temporary restraining order followed by a preliminary injunction. The movie executive plaintiffs were not required to post a bond for the injunction.

Kirk petitioned the superior court to vacate the injunction. The court dismissed the petition on grounds it lacked jurisdiction because the preliminary injunction was not an “award” under Code of Civil Procedure section 1283.4.

The Court of Appeal dismissed Kirk’s appeal, holding both that the preliminary injunction was not an “award” subject to a petition to vacate, and the order dismissing the petition was not appealable for the same reason.

This holding makes preliminary injunctions in arbitration all the more devastating. Not only are the beyond review, but the losing party loses the only statutory safeguard — a bond.

When a court orders a party to move out of a residence, that is a mandatory injunction, which is automatically stayed upon appeal. But if the court also orders the sale of the property, the order is stayed on appeal only if a bond is given. And if the parties later stipulate to a different order, then the appeals of both of those orders are moot.

That is the thumbnail of Tearse v. Tearse (D1d4 Sep. 22, 2021) 2021 WL 4304761 (no. A158582) (nonpub. opn.). The really unusual thing about this case is how the court treated the respondent's argument that the appeal was moot. The court agreed, but was also concerned that it would operate to affirm a trial court's order that was void because entered after an automatic stay. So the court reversed that order as moot. That, surely, is not how the respondent expected his mootness argument would be taken. Be cautious with mootness arguments.

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Judge David O. Carter of the Central District of California made national news when he ordered Los Angeles to put up $1 billion to address its homelessness crisis. But that order was based on claims the plaintiffs did not allege, relief the plaintiffs did not request, and evidence the plaintiffs did not adduce. While trial courts are given wide discretion in issuing preliminary injunctions, the Ninth Circuit in LA Alliance for Human Rights v. County of Los Angeles, ___ F.4th ___ (2021) 2021 WL 431791, thought this was coloring rather far outside the lines.

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The California Supreme Court in *Daly v. San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors* (Aug. 9, 2021) ___ Cal.5th ___ has decided one particular area of the law is unclear and needs "reexamination." When a trial court grants an injunction, and the injunction is appealed, does the injunction still apply during the appeal?

When the Board of Supervisors of San Bernardino violated open-meeting requirements in removing and replacing one of its members, the challenger and a citizen group filed suit and obtained an injunction requiring the Board to rescind the appointment and seat a replacement pursuant to the county charter.

But the Board was not done yet. Hoping to keep the incumbent in office long enough for the upcoming election (see this interesting coverage), the Board appealed, and under Code of Civil Procedure section 916, an appeal automatically stays the order on appeal. But the Court of Appeal denied the Board's petition for supersedeas to effect the stay.

The Supreme Court reversed. And its opinion is a letter to the state legislature to reconsider the appellate stay law.

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Did you know that, when you appeal a mandatory preliminary injunction, the injunction is automatically stayed? An appeal in that instance can be very powerful.

But when is an injunction truly mandatory? Whether an appeal is mandatory or prohibitory can be very tricky to determine. Getting it wrong can be devastating, as the appellant learned in Chanin v. Community Rebuild Partners (D2d5 Apr. 23, 2021) no. B299188 (nonpub. opn.).

The Second District Court of Appeal disagreed that the injunction was mandatory in nature, and concluded the appellant was trying to take advantage of a status quo favorable to her. And because the appellant did not bother to test the proposition in a motion to stay in the trial court, or a petition for writ of supersedeas in the Court of Appeal, the court concluded her failure to comply with the injunction amounted to a willful disobedience giving rise to disentitlement of her right to appeal.

This case is a surprising application of the disentitlement doctrine, because the appellant's conduct was supported by fairly strong legal propositions: (1) on its face, the injunction did appear to be mandatory and thus stayed; (2) the automatic stay does not require the appellant to seek court orders to effect the stay; and (3) the injunction failed a key statutory requirement that it require the moving party to post a bond, and was thus invalid as a matter of law. But the Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal anyway.

The lesson: If an automatic appellate stay seems too good to be true, it might be.

TVA appellate attorney Tim Kowal publishes this weekly update of legal news for trial attorneys. In this edition: extended CA jurisdiction over out-of-state retailers, ADA liability over online-only businesses, courtroom pandemic changes, and pitfalls on new-trial motions.

TVA appellate attorney Tim Kowal publishes this weekly update of legal news for trial attorneys. In this edition: appellate tips on preliminary injunctions, summary judgments, and statements of decisions. And: appellate bonds... without collateral?!