Opinion
G056496
09-26-2019
MICHAEL DASKALAKIS, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. LUPE I. GARCIA, Defendant and Appellant.
Lupe I. Garcia, in pro per.; and Juan Carlos Moran for Defendant and Appellant. Duringer Law Group, Leonard S. Kirschen and Edward Laird for Plaintiff and Respondent.
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS
California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115. (Super. Ct. No. 30-2017-00918509) OPINION Appeal from a judgment of the Superior Court of Orange County, Thomas A. Delaney, Judge. Affirmed. Request for judicial notice filed on December 21, 2018. Granted in part and denied in part. Request for judicial notice filed on May 1, 2019. Denied. Lupe I. Garcia, in pro per.; and Juan Carlos Moran for Defendant and Appellant. Duringer Law Group, Leonard S. Kirschen and Edward Laird for Plaintiff and Respondent.
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Code of Civil Procedure section 664.6 (§ 664.6) provides that "[i]f parties to pending litigation stipulate, in a writing signed by the parties outside the presence of the court or orally before the court, for settlement of the case, or part thereof, the court, upon motion, may enter judgment pursuant to the terms of the settlement." Lupe I. Garcia appeals from a judgment entered against her under this section.
All further statutory references are to this code unless otherwise noted.
The settlement agreement in question purported to resolve two separate lawsuits, each filed by the same plaintiff against a different set of defendants. The first lawsuit, in which Lupe is a defendant and in which this appeal is taken, was filed in Orange County Superior Court. The second lawsuit, filed in Riverside County, named Lupe's sister Lucy Garcia as a defendant, but not Lupe.
Because Lupe Garcia and Lucy Garcia have the same surname, we refer to them by their first names. We mean no disrespect.
At the plaintiff's request, the trial court in the Orange County case entered a judgment against Lupe and the other Orange County defendants based on the settlement agreement under section 664.6. Lupe contends the court erred because her sister Lucy, a defendant in the Riverside case, never signed the settlement agreement. We do not find the argument persuasive. The absence of Lucy's signature is immaterial in the Orange County case because Lucy is not a party in that case and because the plaintiff did not ask the Orange County court to enforce the settlement agreement against Lucy. The Orange County court therefore did not err in entering judgment against Lupe. We also reject Lupe's other arguments against enforcement of the settlement agreement for the reasons explained below. The judgment is affirmed.
I.
FACTS
Michael Daskalakis leased commercial real estate to Rita Ramos and later initiated unlawful detainer proceedings against Ramos for breach of the lease. The court in that action entered a stipulated judgment for $337,500 in favor of Daskalakis and against Ramos.
Daskalakis believed Ramos had transferred certain real properties to third parties to insulate the properties from his judgment, so he filed two lawsuits against Ramos and those third parties to set aside the allegedly fraudulent transfers. The first lawsuit, filed in Orange County, concerned two Anaheim properties and named Ramos, her daughter Lupe, and Israel Hernandez Guerrero as defendants. The second lawsuit, filed in Riverside County, concerned a Corona property and named Ramos, Lucy (Lupe's sister), and JD Management Services, LLC (JDMS) as defendants. Ramos is the only person named as a defendant in both cases.
About two months later, the parties to these two lawsuits, at least some of whom were represented by counsel, negotiated a written settlement agreement resolving both cases. The executed version of the settlement agreement bears the signatures of Daskalakis, Ramos, Lupe, Guerrero, an unnamed representative for JDMS, and persons claiming to be the parties' respective attorneys. Lucy, however, never signed the settlement agreement.
The settlement agreement recites it "may be executed in counterparts, each of which shall be deemed an original and all of which taken together shall constitute but one and the same instrument." Per this provision, the executed version of the settlement agreement has four partially executed signature pages, each bearing page number "6" at the bottom. The signature blocks on these four pages are not identical, however. The first and last signature pages have blanks for the signatures of Ramos, Lupe, Lucy, Guerrero, JDMS, Daskalakis, and the parties' respective counsel. The second and third signature pages have blanks for the signatures of Ramos, Lupe, Guerrero, JDMS, Daskalakis, and the parties' respective counsel, but not Lucy. Ramos and Guerrero signed the first page, Lupe the second, an unnamed representative for JDMS the third, and Daskalakis the fourth. Lucy did not sign the agreement. The record discloses no reason why the four signature pages do not contain identical signature blocks, and the trial court made no finding on that issue.
Daskalakis's attorney explained in an e-mail exchange, however, that he had been "under the impression that Lupe and Lucy were the same person," and when he learned they were not, he advised other counsel he would have to revise the settlement agreement, a draft of which already had been circulated, "to add [Lucy] as a signatory."
The settlement agreement states that "all Parties represent that they have relied upon the legal advice of their attorneys, who are the attorneys of their own choice and that the terms of this Agreement have been completely read and explained to them by their attorneys, and that those terms are fully understood and voluntarily accepted by them." The signature blocks on the first and last signature pages identify Dominique Westmoreland as counsel for Lupe, Lucy, and JDMS. However, the signature blocks on the second and third signature pages identify Westmoreland as counsel only for Lupe and JDMS and do not identify any attorney representing Lucy. Lupe now insists Westmoreland never represented her.
When the defendants in both cases fell behind on their payment obligations under the settlement agreement, Daskalakis filed motions in both cases for entry of judgment on the terms of the settlement agreement under section 664.6. In support, Daskalakis's counsel submitted a declaration authenticating the settlement agreement, which he had personally "approved as to form" and signed. In his moving papers, Daskalakis represented to the trial court that the Orange County defendants were represented by counsel "[a]t all times during the settlement negotiations."
The defendants in both cases retained new counsel and opposed the motions on the ground that Lucy, a defendant in the Riverside case only, had never signed the settlement agreement. Lupe also attested in an accompanying declaration that she "never saw" the full settlement agreement and "did not agree to" its terms, but those facts were neither discussed in her opposition nor offered as a reason to deny the motion for entry of judgment. Further, Lupe never denied the signature on the settlement agreement was hers, nor did she argue she was unrepresented by counsel during negotiations.
The Riverside court denied Daskalakis's motion because Lucy, a defendant in that case, had not signed the settlement agreement. The Orange County court, however, granted Daskalakis's motion. The court reasoned: "[Daskalakis] has met his burden of showing [the] settlement agreement to be enforceable. [¶] A written settlement agreement is enforceable when signed by all the parties on both sides of the action in dispute, including in particular, the parties against whom the settlement agreement is sought to be enforced. (See Harris v. Rudin, Richman & Appel (1999) 74 Cal.App.4th 299, 305.) [¶] The written agreement at issue here has been signed by all of the parties to this action, which is referenced in the agreement as the 'OC COMPLAINT.' And although she is a party to the settlement agreement, Lucy Garcia is only a party defendant in a different action referenced in the agreement as the 'RIVERSIDE COMPLAINT,' which is not before this Court. Moreover, the settlement agreement clearly sets forth the terms to be enforced in this action upon granting of this motion—terms that are not enforceable against Lucy Garcia. Therefore, the fact that Lucy Garcia did not sign the settlement agreement does not render that agreement unenforceable in this action against Rita Ramos, Lupe Garcia and Israel Hernandez Garcia, the only named Defendants in this case."
After granting the motion, the Orange County court entered judgment in favor of Daskalakis and against Ramos, Lupe, and Guerrero under section 664.6. Lupe filed a timely notice of appeal.
Lupe appealed from the trial court's "order after judgment under Code of Civil Procedure, § 904.1(a)(2)," but it is the judgment on the order that is appealable. (Critzer v. Enos (2010) 187 Cal.App.4th 1242, 1251 (Critzer).) In the interests of justice, we construe her appeal as taken from the judgment. (See Boyer v. Jensen (2005) 129 Cal.App.4th 62, 69.)
While her appeal was pending, Lupe filed a motion in the trial court to vacate the judgment, asserting for the first time that the attorney who allegedly represented Lucy and JDMS during settlement negotiations, Dominique Westmoreland, had "defrauded" and "coerced" Lupe into signing the settlement agreement's signature page by misrepresenting what the agreement was about. According to Lupe, she only saw the signature page, she had no idea she was signing a settlement agreement, and Westmoreland claimed her signature was required to facilitate the sale of Lucy's property, the proceeds of which would "make the lawsuit go away."
The trial court denied Lupe's motion to vacate, finding it was in fact a request for reconsideration of the court's ruling on the motion to enter judgment. The court reasoned it lacked jurisdiction to rule on the motion because it already had entered judgment. It further reasoned that even if it had jurisdiction to rule, Lupe's motion was untimely and based on facts known to Lupe and her counsel at the time they opposed Daskalakis's motion for entry of judgment, and thus was not based on new or different facts, circumstances, or law. (See § 1008, subd. (a).)
We grant Lupe's request for judicial notice of (1) Daskalakis's amendment to the Riverside complaint adding Lucy as a defendant, (2) the Riverside defendants' opposition to the motion for entry of judgment in the Riverside case, and (3) the Riverside trial court's order denying the motion for entry of judgment, as they shed light on the cases' procedural histories and are largely consistent with what was filed in the Orange County trial court. However, we deny Lupe's request for judicial notice of various other filings from the Riverside case; those other filings are either already part of the appellate record (e.g., the complaint), thus making judicial notice unnecessary, or they were not part of the record below and have no bearing on the issues presented here. (Evid. Code, § 452, subd. (d) [judicial notice of court records is discretionary]; see Haworth v. Superior Court (2010) 50 Cal.4th 372, 379, fn. 2 ["'Reviewing courts generally do not take judicial notice of evidence not presented to the trial court' absent exceptional circumstances"].) We also deny Lupe's request for judicial notice of an anti-SLAPP motion filed against Lupe in a case pending in Los Angeles County Superior Court; Lupe's request for judicial notice, which refers to a different document altogether, fails to explain why the anti-SLAPP motion is relevant to the appeal and thus does not comply with California Rules of Court, rule 8.252(a)(2)(A). --------
II.
DISCUSSION
A. Section 664.6 and the Standard of Review
As noted, section 664.6 provides that "[i]f parties to pending litigation stipulate, in a writing signed by the parties outside the presence of the court or orally before the court, for settlement of the case, or part thereof, the court, upon motion, may enter judgment pursuant to the terms of the settlement." The Legislature enacted this section "to provide a summary procedure for specifically enforcing a settlement contract without the need for a new lawsuit." (Weddington Productions, Inc. v. Flick (1998) 60 Cal.App.4th 793, 809.) We review the trial court's factual determinations on a section 664.6 motion for substantial evidence, but we review de novo any questions of law concerning the construction and application of section 664.6. (Gauss v. GAF Corp. (2002) 103 Cal.App.4th 1110, 1116.) B. The Absence of Lucy's Signature and Its Impact on Enforceability
Lupe contends the trial court in the Orange County case erred in granting Daskalakis's motion for entry of judgment because Lucy, a party to the settlement agreement, never signed the agreement. We disagree.
Section 664.6 allows a trial court to enter judgment based on a written settlement agreement between "parties to pending litigation" if the agreement is "signed by the parties outside the presence of the court." Courts have construed this statutory language to "require the signatures of the parties seeking to enforce the agreement under section 664.6 and against whom the agreement is sought to be enforced." (Harris v. Rudin, Richman & Appel (1999) 74 Cal.App.4th 299, 305 (Harris).) For example, a settlement agreement signed only by a party's lawyer and not the party herself, or a settlement agreement calling only for one party's signature, is not enforceable under section 664.6. (Levy v. Superior Court (1995) 10 Cal.4th 578, 586; Sully-Miller Contracting Co. v. Gledson/Cashman Construction, Inc. (2002) 103 Cal.App.4th 30, 37; Harris, at p. 305.)
Lupe contends the Orange County court lacked jurisdiction to enforce the settlement agreement because Lucy — a party to the settlement agreement and a defendant in the Riverside action — did not sign it. Lupe misreads the statute. Section 664.6 does not refer to "parties to the settlement agreement"; it refers to "parties to [the] pending litigation." Here, the parties to the pending litigation in Orange County were Daskalakis, Ramos, Lupe, and Guerrero. The settlement agreement, which was signed by all parties to the pending litigation, met the requirements for entry of judgment under section 664.6.
That Lucy never signed the settlement agreement is of no consequence in the Orange County case because Lucy was not a party to the Orange County case. Daskalakis's motion for entry of judgment in the Orange County case did not seek to enforce the settlement agreement against Lucy, a nonparty, so Lucy's signature was not required. (Harris, supra, 74 Cal.App.4th at p. 305 [section 664.6 only "require[s] the signatures of the parties seeking to enforce the agreement under section 664.6 and against whom the agreement is sought to be enforced"].) C. Other Challenges to the Settlement Agreement's Enforceability
Lupe also contends the trial court erred in entering judgment because Lupe never saw the settlement agreement and did not agree to its terms, citing the inconsistencies in the settlement agreement's signature pages as evidence that she "execut[ed] an entirely different document." We are not persuaded. Of course, a court cannot declare a settlement agreement binding on parties who did not personally consent to the settlement. (See Critzer, supra, 187 Cal.App.4th at pp. 1253, 1257.) But Lupe failed to argue lack of consent in the trial court when she opposed Daskalakis's motion for entry of judgment. "[A] trial court judgment is ordinarily presumed to be correct and the burden is on an appellant to demonstrate . . . the trial court committed an error that justifies reversal of the judgment." (Jameson v. Desta (2018) 5 Cal.5th 594, 609.) The record below included a settlement agreement ostensibly signed by all the parties to the Orange County litigation, and Lupe neither denied signing the agreement nor argued lack of consent in her opposition to the motion for entry of judgment. On this limited record, we find no error in the court's conclusion that Daskalakis "met his burden of showing [the] settlement agreement to be enforceable."
Lupe further asserts contends Daskalakis's counsel falsely represented to the trial court that all parties were represented by counsel during settlement negotiations, when in fact Lupe was not represented. Lupe does not explain how those facts are material to the enforceability of the settlement agreement, however, and she cites no authority on point. A party's unrepresented status during contract negotiations perhaps might be relevant to a contract's enforceability if it reflects a disparity in the parties' respective bargaining strengths or otherwise indicates procedural unconscionability. However, we are concerned only with "'"the correctness of a judgment as of the time of its rendition, upon a record of matters which were before the trial court for its consideration."'" (In re B.D. (2008) 159 Cal.App.4th 1218, 1239.) Here, when the trial court considered Daskalakis's motion to enter judgment, there was no evidence before the court that Lupe was unrepresented during negotiations, and Lupe did not raise the issue in her opposition to Daskalakis's motion. If Daskalakis incorrectly represented to the trial court in his motion that the Orange County defendants were all represented by counsel during settlement negotiations, Lupe should have brought that inaccuracy to the court's attention when she opposed the motion. She did not. On this limited record, we find no error.
III.
DISPOSITION
The judgment is affirmed. Daskalakis shall recover his costs on appeal. (Cal. Rules of Court, rule 8.278(a)(1).)
ARONSON, J. WE CONCUR: BEDSWORTH, ACTING P. J. GOETHALS, J.