Opinion
San Francisco City & County Super. Ct. No. 990062
Lambden, J.
This is the fifth appeal resulting from the litigation between Rainer Joachim Faerber and Thomas F. Hyde and The Hyde Law Firm (Hyde). This protracted litigation began with a vehicle accident between Faerber and a third party. Faerber settled the lawsuit and sued his former counsel, Hyde, for legal malpractice. Hyde filed a cross-complaint against Faerber for unpaid attorney fees. The trial court granted Hyde’s motion for judgment on Faerber’s pleadings, and we reversed in Faerber I. Once the matter returned to the lower court, Hyde moved for summary judgment, which the trial court granted in 2003. We affirmed in Faerber II. The trial court conducted a bench trial on Hyde’s cross-complaint for attorney fees and ruled in favor of Faerber.
The prior four nonpublished decisions involving these parties are the following: Faerber v. The Hyde Law Corp. (filed Jan. 14, 2002, A090311) (Faerber I), Faerber v. The Hyde Law Corp. (filed April 4, 2004, A103678) (Faerber II), Faerber v. The Hyde Law Corp. (filed Nov. 27, 2006, A111970) (Faerber III), and Faerber v. The Hyde Law Corp. (filed Jan. 24, 2007, A113527) (Faerber IV).
Subsequently, Hyde filed a memorandum of costs, and the trial court awarded Hyde costs. Faerber filed a motion to correct the error of awarding Hyde costs, since the award was contrary to the court’s declaration at the end of the bench trial that Faerber was the prevailing party. The lower court vacated its order awarding costs and we reversed in Faerber III.
On August 17, 2005, Faerber, in propria persona, filed another lawsuit against Hyde and the attorneys representing Hyde in Faerber’s legal malpractice lawsuit. All of Faerber’s claims were based on Hyde’s filing a memorandum of costs in the prior lawsuit. Hyde brought a special motion to strike pursuant to California’s Anti-Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (anti-SLAPP) statute (Code Civ. Proc., § 425.16). The trial court granted the motion and Faerber appealed. We affirmed the judgment in Faerber IV.
On October 26, 2006, Faerber moved in the trial court to strike the court’s 2003 order granting Hyde’s motion for summary judgment against Faerber’s legal malpractice complaint. On December 4, 2006, the trial court denied this motion because the original case had been fully adjudicated, appealed, and affirmed on appeal, and therefore the trial court had no jurisdiction over Faerber’s motion to strike the summary judgment order.
Faerber filed a notice of appeal from the order denying his motion to strike its 2003 order.
We conclude that the trial court had no jurisdiction to review a judgment that had become final in 2004 after we had affirmed the grant of summary judgment in Faerber II. We, similarly, have no jurisdiction to review an appeal from a judgment that we have already reviewed and that has been final for a number of years. Accordingly, we hereby dismiss Faerber’s appeal.
We concur: Kline, P.J., Richman, J.