Opinion
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED
APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of Kern County No. CV267480. Sidney P. Chapin, Judge.
Sergio Pulido, in pro. per., for Plaintiff and Appellant.
No appearance for Defendants and Respondents.
OPINION
Before Cornell, Acting P.J., Gomes, J. and Dawson, J.
Plaintiff Sergio Pulido sued defendants Connie Lewis and Lewis Bail Bonds for the return of $5,300. Pulido’s complaint alleged causes of action for fraud and conversion. After a one-day court trial, the court entered judgment in favor of the defendants on the ground that Pulido had failed to prove his claims. Pulido appealed. We conclude Pulido has failed to demonstrate that the trial court committed reversible error.
Therefore, the judgment will be affirmed.
FACTS
The facts set forth in the following three paragraphs are taken from Pulido’s verified complaint.
In November 2005, Pulido’s sister-in-law called Lewis Bail Bonds about securing a bond for him. Defendants told his sister-in-law to deposit $5,000 into a bank account at Bank of America, after which they would issue the appropriate bond. Pulido’s sister-in-law deposited the $5,000 as instructed, along with an additional $300 for administrative expenses. A copy of the customer receipt from Bank of America showing a $5,300 deposit on November 21, 2005, is attached as an exhibit to Pulido’s complaint.
Ultimately, the bond could not be issued because Pulido was subject to a federal hold.
Pulido made repeated attempts to obtain a refund of the money deposited with the defendants, but defendants refused to refund the money. Pulido alleges that Connie Lewis made a number of misrepresentations in connection with her refusal to refund the money and that she knew the representations were false and made them with the intent to defraud.
PROCEEDINGS
The appellate record in this case is sparse, which has restricted our description of the facts as well as of the proceedings that took place in the trial court.
The appellant’s appendix contains 17 pages, consisting of Pulido’s four-page verified complaint and the exhibits attached to the complaint. The exhibits are the customer receipt for the deposit at Bank of America and copies of the correspondence from 2008 between Pulido and Lewis regarding Pulido’s request for the return of the money.
The clerk’s transcript on appeal contains four documents: (1) the July 6, 2010, notice of appeal, (2) the notice of filing of appeal prepared by the clerk of the superior court, (3) the judgment after court trial on Judicial Council form JUD 1000 (new Jan. 1, 2002), and (4) appellant’s notice of designation of the record on appeal.
Pulido’s notice of designation of the record on appeal sets forth his election to proceed without a record of the oral proceeding in the trial court. As a result, the appellate record contains no reporter’s transcript of the bench trial. (See Cal. Rules of Court, rule 8.120(b) [when appellant intends to raise issue that requires consideration of oral proceedings before trial court, record on appeal must include a record of oral proceedings, which may be in the form of a reporter’s transcript].)
The last document in our files pertinent to this appeal is a copy of the trial court’s June 8, 2010, minute order, which reflects the court’s ruling on the bench trial held on June 1, 2010.
The minute order (1) denied defendants’ motion for judgment on the pleadings, (2) sustained defendants’ objections to Pulido’s exhibits 1, 2, and 3 based on lack of foundation, authentication, and hearsay, (3) granted a request for judicial notice of defendants’ requests for admissionS and Pulido’s responses to those requests, (4) stated Pulido had failed to carry his burden of proving by admissible evidence the elements of any of his causes of action, and (5) stated all of Pulido’s claims were barred by the statutes of limitation.
On July 6, 2010, Pulido filed a notice of appeal. About two weeks later, the trial court filed a judgment after court trial. Pursuant to California Rules of Court, rule 8.104(d)(2), we will treat the notice of appeal as though it were filed immediately after the judgment was filed.
After Pulido filed his opening appellate brief, this court received a letter from counsel for the defendants stating their belief “that the trial court’s decision was the only proper result in this case” and that they would submit the case on the record.
DISCUSSION
I. What an Appellant Must Show to Establish Trial Court Error
Our discussion of the merits of Pulido’s appeal begins with a review of some of the fundamental rules that govern how appellate courts perform the task of determining whether the trial court committed reversible error.
The first rule is that appellate courts presume the trial court’s judgment is correct. (Denham v. Superior Court (1970) 2 Cal.3d 557, 564.) In explaining this rule, the California Supreme Court stated: “‘All intendments and presumptions are indulged to support it on matters as to which the record is silent, and error must be affirmatively shown.’” (Ibid.) The net effect of the presumption of correctness and its corollary that an appellant must affirmatively demonstrate error is that an appellant will not win on appeal without presenting materials that show the trial court made a mistake. Usually, those mistakes can be categorized as either (1) a mistake in finding facts or (2) a mistake in identifying the correct rule of law and applying it to the facts.
To demonstrate that a trial court made an erroneous finding of fact, the appellant must show that the finding is not supported by substantial evidence. (Crawford v. Southern Pacific Co. (1935) 3 Cal.2d 427, 429 [substantial evidence rule].) The substantial evidence standard for review has been described by our Supreme Court as follows:
“Where findings of fact are challenged on a civil appeal, we are bound by the ‘elementary, but often overlooked principle of law, that … the power of an appellate court begins and ends with a determination as to whether there is any substantial evidence, contradicted or uncontradicted, ’ to support the findings below. (Crawford v. Southern Pacific Co.[, supra, ] 3 Cal.2d 427, 429.) We must therefore view the evidence in the light most favorable to the prevailing party, giving it the benefit of every reasonable inference and resolving all conflicts in its favor in accordance with the standard of review so long adhered to by this court.” (Jessup Farms v. Baldwin (1983) 33 Cal.3d 639, 660.)
Evidence is “substantial” for purposes of this standard of review if it is of ponderable legal significance, reasonable in nature, credible, and of solid value. (Brewer v. Murphy (2008) 161 Cal.App.4th 928, 935-936.)
To affirmatively show legal error by the trial court, an “appellant must present meaningful legal analysis supported by citations to authority and citations to facts in the record that support the claim of error. [Citations.] [C]onclusory claims of error will fail.” (In re S.C. (2006) 138 Cal.App.4th 396, 408.)
Because Pulido is representing himself in this litigation, we also note that the Court of Appeal treats self-representing litigants like any other party. As a result, they are held to the same rules of appellate procedure as parties represented by an attorney. (Nwosu v. Uba (2004) 122 Cal.App.4th 1229, 1246-1247 [appellant representing self on appeal must follow correct rules of procedure].)
II. Sufficiency of the Evidence
Pulido’s opening brief asserts that he provided clear and sufficient evidence in the superior court indicating that $5,300 was deposited into defendants’ bank account for the purpose of securing a bail bond from San Jose, California on November 21, 2005.
Based on Pulido’s citations to pages in the appellant’s appendix, it appears he is relying on the deposit receipt from Bank of America and correspondence from Connie Lewis to support his position that clear and sufficient evidence was provided to the superior court.
The problem with Pulido’s reliance on these documents is that the appellate record does not show that they were ever admitted into evidence, which is different than showing they were submitted to the trial court. Pulido’s appellate papers do not establish what documents and testimony were admitted into evidence at the bench trial. Thus, Pulido has failed to demonstrate that evidence proving his claims was admitted into evidence.
It is possible Pulido believes that the trial court erred when it sustained defendants’ objections to the admission of his exhibits. His papers, however, do not assert this theory of trial court error.
Based on the state of the appellate record, we are unable to identify any error by the trial court. For instance, we cannot determine that the trial court’s findings of fact were not supported by substantial evidence because we do not have a record of the testimony presented during the bench trial. (See Navarro v. Perron (2004) 122 Cal.App.4th 797, 801 [without reporter’s transcript of trial, appellate court presumed evidence was sufficient to support trial court’s findings].) The lack of a record of the proceedings before the trial court also means we cannot determine if the exhibits offered by Pulido had an adequate foundation and were authenticated before Pulido requested their admission into evidence.
Therefore, we conclude that Pulido has failed to affirmatively demonstrate that the trial court made erroneous findings of fact or committed evidentiary error.
III. Statute of Limitations
Pulido challenges the trial court’s conclusion that his claims were barred by the statutes of limitations contained in Code of Civil Procedure sections 338 (three-year limitations period) or 339 (two-year limitations period). He asserts that he filed his complaint on June 9, 2009, which was within two years after Connie Lewis’s October 7, 2008, letter refusing to return the money.
Pulido cites the statutory provision that states an action based on an oral contract shall not be deemed to accrue until the discovery of the loss or damage by the aggrieved party. (Code Civ. Proc., § 339, subd. 1.) Pulido presents no arguments or explanation for his position that he did not discover his loss of $5,300 until Lewis refused to return the money. Under the applicable rules of appellate practice, we must presume that the trial court found that Pulido was aware of the fact that he did not receive bail when it happened in late 2005 and early 2006 and, therefore, he discovered at that time that he was economically injured because he did not get the services allegedly purchased with the $5,300. Pulido has not demonstrated that this implied finding of fact is not supported by substantial evidence. (Navarro v. Perron, supra, 122 Cal.App.4th at p. 801.) As a result, Pulido has failed to establish that the trial court erred when it rejected his position that the statute of limitations did not begin to run until October 2008.
In summary, Pulido has not affirmatively demonstrated that the trial court committed error when it entered judgment for defendants after the bench trial.
DISPOSITION
The judgment is affirmed. The parties shall bear their own costs on appeal as defendants filed no appellate brief.