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Kaura v. Jackson

California Court of Appeals, Fourth District, Third Division
Jun 18, 2024
No. G062511 (Cal. Ct. App. Jun. 18, 2024)

Opinion

G062511

06-18-2024

BOBBY KAURA, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. MICHELE JACKSON, Defendant and Appellant.

Michele Jackson, in pro. per., for Defendant and Appellant. Gregory W. Brittain for Plaintiff and Respondent.


NOT TO BE PUBLISHED

Appeal from a judgment of the Superior Court of Orange County, No. 30-202301306858 Sandy N. Leal, Judge. Dismissed with directions. Motion to dismiss denied as moot.

Michele Jackson, in pro. per., for Defendant and Appellant.

Gregory W. Brittain for Plaintiff and Respondent.

OPINION

O'LEARY, P. J.

Michele Jackson appeals from a March 2023 unlawful detainer judgment about a residence she had leased, as well as a denial of her motion to set aside an entry of default against her. Jackson contends, among other things, that she was served with a defective summons and therefore the trial court's personal jurisdiction over her was never established. The unlawful detainer judgment was entered in favor of the landlord Bobby Kaura, who had agreed to lease the residence to Jackson until August 2023.

During the pendency of this appeal, Kaura filed a motion to dismiss this appeal and we requested briefing on whether the appeal is moot. In her response, Jackson concedes she entered a settlement agreement for rent she owed to Kaura and that the agreement formed the basis of an April 2023 judgment in Kaura's favor that was entered in a related matter.

Based on undisputed facts arising from the April 2023 judgment and the expiration of Jackson's possessory interest in the residence, we conclude there is no appellate relief to grant Jackson because she would not be entitled to restitution even if she prevailed in this appeal. We dismiss the appeal as moot and direct the trial court to vacate the judgment and dismiss this matter as moot.

FACTS

I. The Two Related Lawsuits

A. The Lease Payment Action

In August 2021, Kaura entered into a residential lease agreement with Jackson that at all times remained set to expire on August 11, 2023. Rent for the first year of the lease was set at $10,500 per month and for the second year at $11,000 per month.

In August 2022, Kaura filed a lawsuit against Jackson for breach of the lease agreement (the lease payment lawsuit). They entered into a December 2022 settlement agreement and. in January 2023, Kaura moved the trial court to enforce the settlement by entering a judgment against Jackson for lease payments owed to Kaura. (Code Civ. Proc., § 664.6.)

All further undesignated statutory references are to the Code of Civil Procedure.

An April 2023 judgment was entered finding Jackson had not paid rent for seven months in 2022 and that, after the settlement agreement, she had only made one payment of $15,000 to Kaura in January 2023. The judgment decreed that, including other charges and prejudgment interest, Jackson owed Kaura $65,506, the equivalent of about six months of rent.

B. The Unlawful Detainer Action

Kaura filed the underlying unlawful detainer lawsuit against Jackson in February 2023. Most relevant to Jackson's assertions on appeal, the trial court clerk's office endorsed a summons that erroneously identified the civil complex branch of the trial court, instead of its central branch, as the location for the litigation. The summons also incorrectly assigned a case number that ended with the wrong suffix.

Sixteen days later, on February 23, 2023 (all dates without mention of year will refer to 2023), the clerk's office issued a "correction of error" (capitalization omitted) that identified the central branch as the correct location for the case. The correction notice was not included in the papers that were personally served on Jackson two days later, on February 25, which included the inaccurate summons and complaint, along with other case-initiating papers.

Assuming valid service, Jackson's five-day deadline to file an answer in the unlawful detainer action was March 3. (§§ 1167 &1167.3.) According to Jackson, due to a combination of incorrect information contained in the inaccurate summons, her job circumstances, and her inadvertence, she ultimately filed an answer through the court's website on March 4, at 12:05 a.m., without a required verification. (§§ 446, 1166(a)(1), 1177.)

Although Jackson received confirmation her filing had been received, on March 10 she received a notice that her answer had been rejected by the trial court clerk's office due to the lack of a verification. By that time, when Jackson attempted to file a verified answer, the clerk's office had already granted Kaura's March 8 request for entry of default.

On March 20, Jackson filed a motion entitled "Motion to Set Aside Entry of Default Due to Wrong Case Number on Summons Served on Defendant Precluding Filing of Answer" (the set aside motion). On March 22, the trial court entered the default unlawful detainer judgment underlying this appeal, awarding possession of the residence to Kaura without awarding any damages, costs, or attorney fees. The court heard arguments on the set aside motion and took it under submission on March 24.

We omit some capitalizations in the parties' briefings.

The following week, the court issued a minute order explaining its denial of the set aside motion, as follows: "On or about March 20, 2023, [Jackson] filed [the set aside motion]. On or about March 22, 2023, [Kaura] filed his opposition to the motion. Having heard argument from the parties and read and considered all papers and evidence, the court now rules as follows: [Jackson] failed to establish mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or excusable neglect as the basis for her failure to file a timely answer in this matter. After hearing [Jackson]'s testimony, the court did not find [Jackson]'s testimony credible as to her explanation why she could not file a timely answer. Indeed, after allegedly discovering that her answer was rejected by the court clerk due to lack of [a] verified answer, [Jackson] waited an additional 10 days to file this motion." (Some capitalization omitted.) Jackson timely filed her notice of this appeal in April 2023.

Although immaterial to our conclusion that this appeal should be dismissed as moot, we note Jackson has not included the March 24 minute order that the trial court referenced in its denial ruling and that there is no reporter's transcript for the March 24 hearing or any other hearing where Jackson's testimony was received, as referenced in the ruling.

C. Events Subsequent to Jackson's Notice of Appeal

As noted, in the same month that Jackson filed this appeal, the trial court handling the lease payment lawsuit entered its judgment based on the settlement agreement between Jackson and Kaura in that case. Three months later, that court issued a warrant for Jackson's arrest after she failed to appear for a duly noticed debtor's examination.

One month after the warrant issued in the lease payment lawsuit, Kaura filed in this court a motion to dismiss this appeal, based on the disentitlement doctrine and Jackson's failure to appear for the debtor's examination. (See, e.g., In re E.M. (2012) 204 Cal.App.4th 467, 477 [doctrine "may also apply to cases in which the appellant has violated orders other than the one from which the appeal has been taken"].) The parties' attorneys filed declarations in this court in connection with Kaura's motion. We deferred our decision on it and requested supplemental briefing on whether this appeal should be dismissed as moot.

DISCUSSION

In her appeal, Jackson asserts the trial court's "default judgment should be reversed, with directions to enter judgment in [her] favor . . . for wrongful eviction resulting from the erroneous default judgment." On mootness, Jackson concedes that her lease of the residence ended in August 2023, according to its original terms. She maintains, however, that she was wrongfully "removed from the property in June 2023" and therefore "restitution or a money judgment" should be awarded to her if we reverse the unlawful detainer judgment underlying this appeal.

I. Mootness

Courts have a duty "'"to decide actual controversies by a judgment which can be carried into effect, and not to give opinions upon moot questions or abstract propositions, or to declare principles or rules of law which cannot affect the matter in issue in the case before it."' [Citation.] A case becomes moot when events '"render[] it impossible for [a] court, if it should decide the case in favor of plaintiff, to grant him any effect[ive] relief."' [Citation.] For relief to be 'effective,' two requirements must be met. First, the plaintiff must complain of an ongoing harm. Second, the harm must be redressable or capable of being rectified by the outcome the plaintiff seeks. [Citation.]" (In re D.P. (2023) 14 Cal.5th 266, 276.)

Both parties have briefed this court's recent opinion in Shapell Socal Rental Properties, LLC v. Chico's FAS, Inc. (2022) 85 Cal.App.5th 198 (Shapell), which involved a commercial tenant that appealed from a default unlawful detainer judgment entered against it after the landlord's counsel failed to communicate with the tenant's counsel. (Id. at pp. 213-217 ["ethical and statutory duty to advise" opposing counsel].) As in this case, but with important distinctions we discuss below, the landlord there had litigated the issue of lease payments owed by tenant in a separate but related case. (Id. at p. 208.)

In Shapell, the tenant succeeded on appeal based on the opposing counsel's failure to communicate. (Shapell, supra, 85 Cal.App.5th at pp. 216219.) The panel of this court that decided the appeal concluded it was not moot based on the possibility of restitutionary relief for the tenant. (Id. at pp. 209-212 [discussing section 908 and trial court authority to award restitution following reversal on appeal].) The mootness analysis rested on the principle that "'"[a] person whose property has been taken under a judgment 'is entitled to restitution if the judgment is reversed or set aside, unless restitution would be inequitable.'"' [Citation.]" (Shapell, supra, 85 Cal.App.5th at p. 210.)

In contrast to Shapell, this appeal is moot because, assuming arguendo the judgment in this matter is reversed, we conclude it would be inequitable for Jackson to receive restitution. There are three critical distinctions between this case and Shapell. First, Shapell did not involve a lapsed lease end date. In contrast, here, it is undisputed that, from the beginning of their landlord-tenant relationship, the parties had agreed Jackson's lease would end eight months ago, in August 2023. The point provides a clear framework for assessing the equities at issue because the maximum possessory benefit that Jackson lost because of, in her own words, being "removed from the property in June 2023" is about two and a half months.

The second distinction between Shapell and this case is that the related litigation here (i.e., the lease payment lawsuit) presents us with a final judgment (i.e., that was not appealed from). (See Shapell, supra, 85 Cal.App.5th at pp. 208-209 [discussing landlord's "application for a right to attach order and issuance of a writ of attachment"].) The April 2023 judgment in the lease payment lawsuit increases the relevance of that related litigation because it allows judicial notice of facts establishing the truth about dealings. (People v. Franklin (2016) 63 Cal.4th 261, 280 ["'"A court may take judicial notice of the existence of each document in a court file, but can only take judicial notice of the truth of facts asserted in documents such as orders, findings of fact and conclusions of law, and judgments"'"].) That is, given neither party opposes taking notice of the factual findings in the judgment, we apply the doctrine of issue preclusion (Boeken v. Philip Morris USA, Inc. (2010) 48 Cal.4th 788, 797) to conclude that, as of April 2023 (when this appeal was filed), Jackson owed over $65,000 to Kaura based on the equivalent of five to six missed rent payments for the residence at issue. In direct contrast, the tenant in Shapell "asserted it was not in default or breach of [its l]ease" (Shapell, supra, 85 Cal.App.5th at p. 205) and there was no related judgment saying otherwise.

This matter's third distinction from Shapell follows from the first two. There are no unresolved "factual disputes" (Shapell, supra, 85 Cal.App.5th at p. 211) that would materially clarify the parties' respective circumstances in this case. The parties agreed that Jackson could lease the residence until August 2023, and she stopped paying many months before then but continued living there until about two months before the lease's end date.

Based on the parties' supplemental briefing on mootness, as well as declarations submitted on Kaura's motion to dismiss this appeal, there is no dispute Jackson has not made a single payment on the balance owed under the April 2023 judgment in the lease payment lawsuit.

Based on the aspects discussed above, we conclude that Shapell is factually distinguishable from this matter. Even if the unlawful detainer judgment of this appeal was reversed, Jackson would not be entitled to restitution for loss of possession of the residence because it is undisputed she entered into her settlement agreement with Kaura and the lease term has expired with a substantial balance owed to Kaura. Given that no restitution would be warranted, there is no effective relief available to Jackson through this appeal, rendering it moot. Kaura's motion to dismiss this appeal based on the disentitlement doctrine is therefore also moot.

DISPOSITION

We dismiss this appeal as moot and direct the trial court to vacate the judgment and dismiss the action as moot. The parties shall bear their own costs on appeal.

WE CONCUR: BEDSWORTH, J., SANCHEZ, J.


Summaries of

Kaura v. Jackson

California Court of Appeals, Fourth District, Third Division
Jun 18, 2024
No. G062511 (Cal. Ct. App. Jun. 18, 2024)
Case details for

Kaura v. Jackson

Case Details

Full title:BOBBY KAURA, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. MICHELE JACKSON, Defendant and…

Court:California Court of Appeals, Fourth District, Third Division

Date published: Jun 18, 2024

Citations

No. G062511 (Cal. Ct. App. Jun. 18, 2024)