Opinion
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED
Super. Ct. No. G061548
ROBIE, J.
Lexington National Insurance Company, the surety on three bail bonds, appeals from an order denying its motion to vacate forfeiture of the bonds and from the summary judgment entered on that forfeiture. The trial court denied Lexington’s motion on the ground it was not timely filed. On appeal, Lexington contends the trial court lost jurisdiction to forfeit the bail because the court failed to give proper notice of the forfeiture to Lexington and the bail agent, Toler Bail Bonds. Lexington also contends that if notice was properly given, its motion to vacate forfeiture was timely filed.
Finding no merit in either argument, we will affirm.
FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
On December 15, 2004, Lexington posted three bonds in the amounts of $5,000, $10,000, and $30,000 to secure the release of Debra Roberts, the defendant in three criminal cases in Yolo County. When Roberts failed to appear as ordered for a trial readiness conference in all three cases (which apparently had been consolidated), the court declared bail forfeited. On September 28, 2005 -- within 30 days of the forfeiture -- the court sent three notices of forfeiture (one for each bond) to Lexington and Toler. The notices were sent to the addresses shown on the bail bonds.
On October 4, 2005, an envelope that apparently contained one or more of the notices of forfeiture mailed to Lexington was returned to the court by the post office. On the envelope was a notation showing that Lexington had a new address but the forwarding order had expired. The next day, the court sent another notice of forfeiture of the $10,000 bond to Lexington at its new address. It does not appear from the record whether the court sent notices of forfeiture of the $5,000 and $30,000 bonds to Lexington’s new address.
The evidence later showed that Lexington had changed its address in August 2004, four months before it posted the bonds relating to Roberts showing the old address.
Toler learned of the forfeiture on or about October 7, 2005, when he “received [his] surety forfeiture report.” On or about November 25, 2005, Toler learned that Roberts was in custody in San Joaquin County. At that time, Toler faxed a receipt to San Joaquin County acknowledging the surrender of Roberts to the custody of San Joaquin County on a Solano County case in which Toler was the bail agent for Lexington. For some reason not explained in this record, it was not until four months later, on March 29, 2006, that Toler faxed a receipt to San Joaquin County acknowledging the surrender of Roberts on the three Yolo County cases. A week after that, on April 6, 2006, Lexington filed its motion to vacate the forfeiture of the bonds and exonerate the bail.
As will be discussed in further detail later, Toler claimed he never received the notices of forfeiture mailed to him because he changed addresses shortly before they were sent.
The county opposed the motion as untimely because it was not filed within 185 days of the mailing of the notices of forfeiture on September 28, 2005.
On July 26, 2006, after Lexington’s motion had been argued but while it was still under consideration, Division Six of the Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District decided People v. Ranger Ins. Co. (2006) 141 Cal.App.4th 867 (Ranger II), holding that when “[a] defendant is arrested outside the county in which his underlying case is located within 180 days of notice of his bail forfeiture,” “the surety has no time constraints in which to move to exonerate the bond.” (Id. at p. 869.) It appears neither side brought this opinion to the trial court’s attention at the time.
On August 23, 2006, the trial court denied Lexington’s motion to vacate the forfeiture and exonerate the bonds as untimely. Two weeks later, Lexington filed a motion for reconsideration based on Ranger II. On September 11, 2006, while that motion was pending, the trial court entered summary judgment against Lexington on the $30,000 bond. The record does not reveal what happened to the $5,000 and $10,000 bonds.
On September 27, 2006, the trial court denied Lexington’s motion for reconsideration on the ground the court was not bound by the Ranger II decision.
On October 6, 2006, Lexington filed a timely notice of appeal from the order denying its motion to vacate the forfeiture and from the subsequent summary judgment.
Lexington also purported to appeal from the order denying its motion for reconsideration, but that order is not appealable. (See LiMandri v. Judkins (1997) 52 Cal.App.4th 326, 333, fn. 1.)
DISCUSSION
I
Release Of Obligations Under The Bonds
When a court has declared a forfeiture on a bail bond in the amount of more than $400 because of the defendant’s failure to appear, the court clerk must, “within 30 days of the forfeiture, mail notice of the forfeiture to the surety” and “[a]t the same time . . . mail a copy of the forfeiture notice to the bail agent whose name appears on the bond.” (Pen. Code, § 1305, subd. (b).) The statute further provides that “[i]f the surety is an authorized corporate surety, and if the bond plainly displays the mailing address of the corporate surety and the bail agent, then notice of the forfeiture shall be mailed to the surety at that address and to the bail agent, and mailing alone to the surety or the bail agent shall not constitute compliance with this section. [¶] The surety . . . shall be released of all obligations under the bond if any of the following conditions apply: [¶] (1) The clerk fails to mail the notice of forfeiture in accordance with this section within 30 days after the entry of the forfeiture. [¶] (2) The clerk fails to mail the notice of forfeiture to the surety at the address printed on the bond. [¶] (3) The clerk fails to mail a copy of the notice of forfeiture to the bail agent at the address shown on the bond.” (Ibid.)
All further statutory references are to the Penal Code unless otherwise indicated.
There is no dispute here that the Yolo County Court Clerk mailed the notices of forfeiture within 30 days after entry of the forfeitures to the addresses for Lexington and Toler shown on the bonds. Nonetheless, Lexington argues that the court lost jurisdiction to forfeit the bail because Toler “never received notice of [the forfeiture of] any of the three bail bonds” and because Lexington did not receive notice of the forfeiture of two of the three bonds. We will address each of those arguments in turn.
A
Toler
We begin with the argument relating to Toler. In a supplemental declaration in support of Lexington’s motion, Tom Toler asserted that he moved from the address shown on the bonds on or about September 15, 2005, and that on or about September 18, 2005, he “served the Yolo County Superior Court with a written notice of this change of address.” He further attested that although he “obtained a mail forwarding order from the United States Postal Service” from the old address to the new address, “mail delivery from the [old] address has been problematic” and he did not receive a notice of forfeiture for any of the three bonds relating to Roberts’s three Yolo County cases. He claimed he learned of the forfeiture on or about October 7, 2005, when he “received [his] surety forfeiture report.”
Lexington argues that the failure of the trial court to give notice of the forfeitures to Toler deprived the court of jurisdiction to forfeit the bail. The problem with that argument is that, as noted above, the trial court clerk did exactly what was required by the statute, which was to send the notices of forfeiture of the bail bonds to the addresses for the surety and the bail agent shown on the bonds within 30 days after entry of the forfeitures. Thus, there is no statutory basis for releasing Lexington from its obligations under the bond. Furthermore, the cases Lexington cites in support of its argument are of no assistance.
In County of Los Angeles v. Resolute Ins. Co. (1972) 22 Cal.App.3d 961, the court mailed the notice of forfeiture to a Los Angeles address for a general agent for the surety, but not to “the surety’s principal office in Palo Alto, California, the address of which was imprinted on the bail bonds.” (Id. at p. 963.) The appellate court concluded that the summary judgment on the bonds was void because “[t]he statutory requirement is not that notice be given to a ‘general agent’ but that it be given to the company at the address of its principal office which was printed on the bond.” (Id. at pp. 963-964.)
In People v. Earhart (1972) 28 Cal.App.3d 840, the court mailed the notice of forfeiture to the surety but not to the bail agent. (Id. at p. 842.) The appellate court concluded that the trial court erred denying relief from forfeiture because “[t]he statute imposes precise duties. The clerk shall mail the notice to the surety and a copy to the bail agent. If he does not mail ‘such notice’ within the prescribed time, the surety is released.” (Id. at p. 843.)
Each of these cases involved a failure by the trial court to comply with the express requirements of the statute. There was no such failure here. Thus, these cases do not aid Lexington.
In its reply brief, Lexington relies on People v. Ranger Ins. Co. (1996) 51 Cal.App.4th 1379 (Ranger I) for the proposition that “where a court has been notified of a change of address, it cannot ignore it, and to do so deprives the court of jurisdiction and exonerates the bond.” We could disregard this argument as improperly raised for the first time in the reply brief (see Williams v. California Physicians’ Service (1999) 72 Cal.App.4th 722, 730-731); however, we choose to address it on its merits, of which we find none.
In Ranger I, which arose from a Santa Clara County case, the surety posted a bail bond that showed its address as “that of its managing agent, Spencer Douglass, in San Diego.” (Ranger I, supra, 51 Cal.App.4th at p. 1381.) Shortly thereafter, the surety “obtained a restraining order against Spencer Douglass and . . . served each California county with a copy of the order and a notice that [the surety] was no longer writing bail in California and requesting that forfeiture notices be sent to its post office box in Houston, Texas.” (Ibid.) Several months later, the surety “wrote the Santa Clara County Clerk that it was resuming bail bond operations in California and reminding the clerk of its new address in Houston, Texas.” (Ibid.) When the defendant ultimately failed to appear for sentencing, the court mailed notice of the forfeiture of the bond to Douglass rather than to the surety at its Houston address. (Id. at p. 1382.) The surety never received notice of the forfeiture. (Ibid.) The surety eventually learned of the forfeiture, however, when the court sent notice of the entry of the summary judgment on the forfeiture to the surety’s Houston address. (Ibid.)
On appeal from the trial court’s denial of the surety’s motion to discharge the forfeiture, the appellate court concluded that the notice of forfeiture sent to Douglass was not effective to satisfy the statutory requirements. (Ranger I, supra, 51 Cal.App.4th at pp. 1385-1386.) The court explained that “[w]hile the statute requires the court clerk to mail the notice of forfeiture to the bail bondsman and to the surety at their addresses which appear on the bail bond, this is so because mailing to those addresses is the means best calculated to give actual notice. . . . When the trial court has in its hand a notice from the surety that it has moved and all forfeiture notices should be sent to a new address, the trial court is not entitled to ignore that notice by sending the notice to the address listed on the bond. . . . [¶] The purpose of the statute is to give actual notice to the surety when its bond is in danger of being forfeited, so it can choose to act one way or another. When the clerk of the court does not send the notice both to the surety and to the bail bondsman as required by the statute, the surety is exonerated from its obligations under the bond. Here the trial court had in its hands the actual information it needed in order to effectuate the purpose of the statute--to give actual notice to the surety of the forfeiture. It chose to ignore this information in favor of the address imprinted on the bond which belonged to the general agent, with whom the surety was no longer associated. . . . [S]ending notice to the defunct general agent was an empty act, meaningless under the statute. [¶] . . . [¶] . . . In summary, we hold that section 1305 must be strictly and precisely followed in order to accomplish its purposes. When the trial court follows the statutory provision, knowing that it will defeat the statute’s purpose, this literal compliance does not meet the statutory requirement.” (Ranger I, at p. 1386.)
Contrary to Lexington’s suggestion, Ranger I does not stand for the proposition that a court’s failure to send a forfeiture notice to a new address shown on a change of address form “deprives the court of jurisdiction and exonerates the bond” no matter what. The significant factor in Ranger I was that because the court ignored the change of address, the statute’s purpose was not served because the surety never received notice of the forfeiture. (Ranger I, supra, 51 Cal.App.4th at p. 1382.) Thus, what Ranger I stands for (at most) is this: The surety is released from its obligations under the bond when a trial court ignores a change of address if the surety (or bail agent) is thereby deprived of notice of the forfeiture. If, on the other hand, the surety (or bail agent) actually receives notice of the forfeiture despite the court’s failure to honor the change of address, the surety is not released from its obligations.
This conclusion is apparent from another part of the decision in Ranger I, where the appellate court addressed an earlier forfeiture in the case. In that earlier instance, the trial court mailed notice of the forfeiture to Douglass, who forwarded it to the surety. (Ranger I, supra, 51 Cal.App.4th at p. 1381.) In determining that the trial court had discharged its duty to the surety in that instance, the appellate court explained that “[b]ecause actual notice was received, although it was forwarded by Douglass to the surety, the statute’s goal of effective notice was achieved in this instance. [Citation.] Because there was actual notice, there is no circumstance up to that point which defeats the trial court’s forfeiture of the bond.” (Id. at p. 1385.)
Here, Lexington cannot claim that Toler never received actual notice of the forfeiture of the bonds in the Yolo County cases because Tom Toler attested that he learned of the forfeiture from a “surety forfeiture report” he received on or about October 7, 2005. Thus, Ranger I is of no assistance to Lexington here.
B
Lexington
Lexington next contends “the trial court . . . lost jurisdiction when it failed to give notice [to Lexington] on two of the three bonds in question.” Again, we disagree. Lexington’s argument rests on the proposition that the September 28 mailing to Lexington was invalid and that the only notice the trial court properly gave to Lexington was the notice of forfeiture of the $10,000 bond the court mailed on October 5, when it learned of Lexington’s new address. This proposition is faulty, however, because the September 28 mailing was valid. The Yolo County Court Clerk complied with the statutory requirements when it mailed the three forfeiture notices on September 28 to the address for Lexington shown on the bonds. Moreover, the evidence supports an implied finding by the trial court that Lexington did not notify the court of its new address between the time the bonds were issued in December 2004 and the time the court issued the notices of forfeiture in September 2005.
In an attempt to show that it had notified the court of its new address, Lexington offered a supplemental declaration from Lisa Slater, its vice-president and chief operating officer. Slater asserted that Lexington had moved to its new address in August 2004 and that she -- presumably at a time contemporaneous with the move -- “supervised the mailing of change of address forms to courts throughout the United States.” She further asserted that “the records for the changes of address that had been mailed to the California courts were inadvertently destroyed” sometime after October 1, 2005, in a changeover of employees. Finally, she asserted that she had found a record of a notice of forfeiture in another Yolo County case that had been forwarded to Lexington in July 2005, and “[i]f not previously sent, the receipt of this forwarded notice would have triggered our system to mail a change of address to Yolo County Superior Court, on or about July 5, 2005.”
Lexington contends “[t]he clear inference from this evidence is that the Yolo County courts were likely notified of the change of address.” That may be true, but a fair inference from Slater’s assertions is that Lexington mailed its change of address form to Yolo County in or around the time it changed addresses in August 2004, which was a full four months before the three bonds were filed with the court displaying Lexington’s old address. Lexington offers no authority suggesting that the trial court was bound to honor a change of address form that was filed before the bonds that are at issue.
Lexington suggests that even if the trial court did not receive a change of address form after the bonds were filed, the court still lost jurisdiction to forfeit the bonds because “the court record establishes that the envelope containing the notices of September 28, 2005 . . . was returned to the Yolo court and that the court remailed the notices on October 5, 2005.” According to Lexington, this means “[t]hat even the trial court did not regard [the September 28] notices as valid.” Not so. That the trial court made an effort to notify Lexington at the new address shown on the returned envelope does not mean the original notices were invalid, or that the court regarded them as so. What matters here is two things. First, the court complied with the terms of the statute by mailing the original notices to the address for Lexington shown on the bonds. Second, viewed in the light most favorable to the trial court’s ruling, the evidence does not establish that the court disregarded a change of address form that it received after the bonds were filed. While it is true Lexington did not receive the September 28 notices, the fault for that lies squarely with Lexington, which allowed bonds with an outdated address to be filed and then failed to notify the court of the problem before the defendant whose appearance was secured by the bonds failed to appear.
In summary, Lexington has failed to establish that it was released from its obligations under the bonds because of the manner in which the trial court notified Lexington and Toler of the forfeitures.
II
Timeliness Of Lexington’s Motion
Relying on Ranger II, Lexington contends that under subdivision (c)(3) of section 1305, there was no requirement that the motion for relief be filed before the expiration of the 185-day exoneration period. We disagree.
Subdivision (c)(3) of section 1305 provides that “[i]f, outside the county where the case is located, the defendant is surrendered to custody by the bail or is arrested in the underlying case within the 180-day period, the court shall vacate the forfeiture and exonerate the bail.” Based on this provision, the appellate court in Ranger II concluded that when “[a] defendant is arrested outside the county in which his underlying case is located within 180 days of notice of his bail forfeiture,” “the surety has no time constraints in which to move to exonerate the bond.” (Ranger II, supra, 141 Cal.App.4th p. 869.)
Recently, however, in People v. Lexington National Ins. Co. (2007) 158 Cal.App.4th 370, this court disagreed with Ranger II and concluded that various other parts of the statutory scheme require a motion for relief from forfeiture to be filed within 185 days of the mailing of the notice of forfeiture. Specifically, this court relied on subdivision (i) of section 1305, which provides that “[a] motion filed in a timely manner within the 180-day period may be heard within 30 days of the expiration of the 180-day period.” The court also relied on subdivision (a) of section 1306, which provides that summary judgment shall be entered on a forfeiture when “the period of time specified in Section 1305 has elapsed without the forfeiture having been set aside.” From these provisions, this court concluded that “the Legislature clearly contemplated that motions to vacate the forfeiture and exonerate the bond, including those brought under section 1305, subdivision (c)(3), be brought prior to the expiration of the statutory period.” (People v. Lexington National Ins. Co., supra, 158 Cal.App.4th at p. 375.)
Subdivision (b) of section 1305 provides that the 180-day period is actually a 185-day period in cases where the notice of forfeiture is required to be mailed.
We follow that decision here. Accordingly, Lexington’s motion for relief from the forfeitures had to be filed within 185 days of the mailing of the notices of forfeiture. Lexington contends it was because the only effective notice was the court’s second notice of October 5, and the 185-day period calculated from October 5 expired on April 10, four days after Lexington filed its motion. We have concluded already, however, that the trial court’s original notices of September 28 were valid. Accordingly, the trial court did not err in concluding that Lexington’s motion was untimely.
DISPOSITION
The judgment is affirmed. Respondent shall recover its costs on appeal. (Cal. Rules of Court, rule 8.278(a).)
We concur: MORRISON, Acting P.J., BUTZ, J.