Opinion
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS
APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County Ct. No. BC365826, Soussan G. Bruguera, Judge. Affirmed.
Gloria Powell, in pro. per.; and Michael Melton for Defendant and Appellant.
Michael J. Gilligan for Plaintiff and Respondent.
BOREN, P.J.
In a prior action to quiet title to residential real property and for breach of contract, appellant Gloria Powell obtained a default judgment against Augusta Carter. The default judgment decreed that The Ozzie A. Carter Family Living Trust (hereinafter, The Carter Trust) was the owner of the real property in question. Powell then had respondent Mercedes Gaitan and her family evicted from the property. Thereafter, Gaitan filed the present action and after a court trial obtained a judgment quieting title, granting injunctive relief, and awarding damages against Powell. The trial court found that the prior default judgment had been obtained by Powell’s “outrageous” conduct in making “material misrepresentations” and “false statements . . . upon which the court relied” regarding the legally required notice to Gaitan, and that Gaitan and her family had been “wrongly evicted.” The court deemed the prior default judgment “null and void ab initio.”
Powell appeals and contends that Gaitan’s judgment against her is barred by the res judicata effect of the prior default judgment, and that Gaitan’s complaint for quiet title was not a proper remedy. We find the contentions without merit and affirm.
FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL SUMMARY
The Carter Trust owned the property in question, a duplex on West 57th Street in Los Angeles, and by a grant deed recorded on September 15, 1999, conveyed title to the property to Ozzie A. Carter and Augusta M. Carter, husband and wife, as joint tenants. On March 22, 2004, an affidavit verifying the death on September 11, 2003, of a joint tenant, Ozzie Carter, was properly recorded in the Recorder’s Office of Los Angeles County. By operation of law, title to the property then vested in the surviving joint tenant, Augusta Carter.
On March 22, 2004, Augusta Carter conveyed title to the property to Siegel Chavez, a general partnership, by a grant deed recorded in the Recorder’s Office of Los Angeles County. On February 8, 2005, after the property had been conveyed to Siegel Chavez as a bona fide purchaser, Powell filed an action to quiet title and for breach of an agreement, asserting that Augusta Carter should be ordered to convey title to the property back to The Carter Trust.
In the complaint in that prior action, Powell misrepresented to the court who owned the real property at the time she filed the action and thereafter, when in fact she knew or should have known and should have advised the court that title to the property had been recorded and vested with Siegel Chavez. Specifically, Powell’s December 7, 2006, declaration in support of her request for entry of judgment stated that Powell had occupied the duplex with her daughter in 2004, and improperly asserted that when Powell was served a notice to vacate in August of 2004, the property belonged to The Carter Trust (which was not the case). Gaitan was never given notice of the action filed by Powell.
On February 9, 2005, Powell recorded in the Recorder’s Office of Los Angeles County a “notice of pendency of action lis pendens,” which indicated that the owner of the property was Augusta Carter. As explained by the an expert witness on title insurance and title examination, because the notice of pending action erroneously indicated Carter was the owner of the property when she had already conveyed title to the property and a public records search would only reveal people who are on the title, Powell’s notice of pending action was not in the chain of title and did not impart any notice of Powell’s lawsuit to Gaitan.
In fact, Gaitan then acquired title to the property in question by a grant deed recorded on March 10, 2005, in the Recorder’s Office of Los Angeles County. On December 7, 2006, long after Gaitan acquired title, a default judgment in Powell’s lawsuit was recorded, and several weeks later an amended judgment was recorded. Both judgments declared that The Carter Trust was the owner of the real property in question.
In a proceeding related to Powell’s lawsuit, on January 22, 2007, Powell filed an application for issuance of a writ of possession. On that form application, Powell checked a box indicating that she had served the prejudgment claim of right to possession in compliance with Code of Civil Procedure section 415.46. However, no such prejudgment claim of right to possession was served on Gaitan, even though she occupied the property. On January 30, 2007, Gaitan first became aware of the action brought by Powell when the county sheriff served her with a notice to vacate. Thereafter, Gaitan, her husband, their son and their daughter (who was on a respirator) were removed from their home.
Code of Civil Procedure section 415.46, subdivision (a) provides as follows: “In addition to the service of a summons and complaint in an action for unlawful detainer upon a tenant and subtenant, if any, as prescribed by this article, a prejudgment claim of right to possession may also be served on any person who appears to be or who may claim to have occupied the premises at the time of the filing of the action. Service upon occupants shall be made pursuant to subdivision (c) by serving a copy of a prejudgment claim of right to possession, as specified in subdivision (f), attached to a copy of the summons and complaint at the same time service is made upon the tenant and subtenant, if any.”
On February 6, 2007, Gaitan filed the complaint in the present action and thereafter filed a first amended complaint. Gaitan sued Powell, The Carter Trust, Augusta Carter, and others to quiet title and for declaratory and injunctive relief and damages. Powell filed an answer to the first amended complaint, denying that Gaitan had been damaged and asserting as an affirmative defense that the complaint was vague and ambiguous. A default was entered against The Carter Trust, and the action was dismissed against Augusta Carter. On September 5, 2007, a one-day court trial ensued against Powell, the remaining defendant. The court ruled in favor of Gaitan and against Powell.
The court’s judgment, filed October 5, 2007, found in pertinent part as follows: that Gaitan had acquired fee title to the property in question in exchange for valuable consideration paid by her for a grant deed from Siegel Chavez, recorded March 10, 2005; that Gaitan had acquired title without notice (actual, constructive, or inquiry notice) of any claims by either Powell or The Carter Trust; and that the December 7, 2006, judgment entered by the court after a default in the prior action brought by Powell (as amended and recorded thereafter) was “obtained based upon false statements made to this court upon which the court relied in issuing such judgments.” The court thus found that the judgment and amended judgment in the prior action by Powell were “null and void ab initio.”
Additionally, the court found as follows: that Powell, acting as the purported trustee of the Carter Trust, went to the real property with two sheriff’s deputies and had Gaitan’s family evicted based on the void judgments; that Powell did not give notice, and knew she had not given notice, to Gaitan of Powell’s prior action or of the prejudgment claim of right to possession; that Powell had no reasonable basis for advising the court, under penalty of perjury, that the prejudgment claim of right to possession had been served in compliance with Code of Civil Procedure section 415.46; that Powell had “no reasonable basis for evicting [Gaitan] and her tenants from the [property] and taking possession”; and that Powell had been in possession of the property from February 7, 2007, through September 5, 2007, and that such possession by her was “unlawful.” The court thus awarded damages to Gaitan and against Powell in the amount of approximately $28,100 for lost rental value, lost personal property, costs of storage of personal property, and increased costs of insurance.
Finally, the court found that Powell’s conduct was “outrageous in that she knowingly made material misrepresentations to the court to obtain the above described Judgments” in the prior action, that she made “material misrepresentations to this court” to obtain a writ of possession, and that she subsequently “wrongfully evicted” Gaitan and her family and tenants from the property with “the intention to cause, or in reckless disregard of probability of causing, emotional distress” to Gaitan. The court thus found that Powell had caused Gaitan severe emotional suffering and awarded emotional distress damages in the amount of $100,000.
Powell appeals.
DISCUSSION
Powell’s bare-bones appeal, consisting of one and one-half pages of argument, perfunctorily asserts that Gaitan’s judgment against her was barred by res judicata, and that Gaitan’s complaint to quiet title was not a proper remedy because she should have filed a motion to set aside the default under section 473.5. Powell’s contentions are without merit.
According to Powell, the present action against her by Gaitan was barred by the doctrine of res judicata because Powell’s prior action resulted in a conclusive judgment (see § 1908) that resolved the issue of title to the real property. However, “[t]he doctrine of res judicata is inapplicable to void judgments. ‘Obviously a judgment, though final and on the merits, has no binding force’ where ‘it is wholly void’ because it has been ‘obtained by extrinsic fraud.’” (Rochin v. Pat Johnson Manufacturing Co. (1998) 67 Cal.App.4th 1228, 1239-1240; see also § 1916.) Here, the trial court held the prior default judgment “null and void ab initio” because it was “obtained based on false statements” related to Powell’s failure to give the requisite notice of proceedings, a finding Powell does not challenge on the merits. Such misconduct in procuring a judgment precludes a party from having its day in court and thus amounts to extrinsic fraud. (See Estate of Standing (1950) 99 Cal.App.2d 668, 673.) Thus, the doctrine of res judicata does not apply.
Moreover, res judicata does not apply because Gaitan was not a party to the prior action brought by Powell. “Only a final judgment on the merits between the same parties or their privies and upon the same cause of action is entitled to the res judicata effect of bar or merger.” (Busick v. Workers’ Comp. Appeals Bd. (1972) 7 Cal.3d 967, 974.) Because Gaitan was not a party to Powell’s prior action (and did not even have notice of it until she was evicted from the property), the prior action has no res judicata effect.
Nor is there any merit to Powell’s contention that Gaitan’s complaint to quiet title was the wrong remedy to challenge the prior judgment, and that Gaitan should have brought, for example, a proceeding pursuant to section 473.5 to set aside the default. Contrary to Powell’s assertion, when a judgment is void, it may be attacked either collaterally or directly. “A suit in equity initiated for the purpose of vacating a judgment is a direct attack. [Citations.] Such an attack may be made on the ground of extrinsic fraud where it appears that there was a willful failure to give the required service or that willfully false affidavits of service were filed. [Citations.] A direct attack has also been allowed in an independent action in equity where there had been a failure to exercise the degree of diligence required by law in connection with personal service [citations], [and also] where false recitals of service were the result of fraud, negligence, or mistake [citation]. . . . [Thus,] extrinsic mistake may be a ground for vacation of a judgment by an independent action in equity where there has been no fair adversary trial.” (Bennett v. Hibernia Bank (1956) 47 Cal.2d 540, 558.)
Hence, Powell’s “material misrepresentations” which resulted in a default judgment “based upon false statements made to the [trial] court”—findings below that are uncontested on appeal—deprived Gaitan of an opportunity to present a meritorious defense. Accordingly, Gaitan properly attacked the prior void judgment by the present independent action.
DISPOSITION
The judgment is affirmed.
We concur: ASHMANN-GERST, J., CHAVEZ, J.
Hereinafter, all statutory references are to the Code of Civil Procedure.