Opinion
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED
San Francisco County Super. Ct. No. CCGC 03-417851
NEEDHAM, J.
Plaintiff Howard C. Schuman filed suit against defendants Leonard B. Berger, Joseph Nadel and Berger Nadel & Vanelli, the attorneys who had represented his mother in estate planning and other matters for over 30 years. His claims were based on defendants’ role in obtaining his signature on grant deeds relinquishing to his mother his interest in two pieces of real property that had been held with her in joint tenancy. The case was tried before a jury, which returned a special verdict rejecting his claims for legal malpractice, misrepresentation, breach of contract under a third party beneficiary theory and breach of fiduciary duty. We reject his various challenges to the special verdict form and the admission of hearsay evidence and affirm the judgment.
FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY
Plaintiff’s mother, Bessie Schuman, is now in her 90s and is legally incompetent due to senile dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. In the 1960s, she and her husband (who died in 1987) started a catering business that operated concession stands in several San Francisco parks. Mrs. Schuman began investing in San Francisco real estate in the 1960s, sometimes with the assistance of plaintiff, who became a licensed real estate broker.
In 1963, Mrs. Schuman and her sister-in-law (plaintiff’s aunt) purchased a building at 2355 Bay Street for $85,000. Mrs. Schuman and her sister-in-law each contributed money toward the $20,000 down payment and plaintiff, then a newly-licensed real estate agent, contributed his commission of $2500. Plaintiff and Mrs. Schuman took title as joint tenants with a combined one-half interest and in 1972, Mrs. Schuman acquired her sister-in-law’s one-half interest. In 1968, Mrs. Schuman purchased the building at 85 Toledo Way for $108,000. Plaintiff contributed his commission of approximately $6000 toward the down payment and he and his mother took title as a joint tenants. In 1979 and 1982, Mrs. Schuman executed documents in connection with her estate planning which stated that plaintiff’s appearance on the title of her properties was “for convenience purposes only,” and that no intention to create a true joint tenancy existed.
Mrs. Schuman made real estate investments in addition to the Bay Street and Toledo Way properties. In 1976, she and her husband bought an eight-unit apartment building on Jackson Street, which they converted to condominiums with the help of plaintiff. They retained three of these units after the conversion, eventually selling one but retaining the other two. In 1978, Mrs. Schuman and her husband purchased a 20-acre estate in Calistoga, on which plaintiff paid $5,500 for a long-term option to purchase.
Defendant Berger has practiced law since 1957 and formed the predecessor firm to Berger, Nadel & Vanelli in 1960. Defendant Nadel became a partner in that firm in 1968. Berger continuously represented Mrs. Schuman and her husband beginning in the 1960s, and he handled their estate planning. He became their personal friend as well. In the 1970s and 1980s, the firm also represented plaintiff in various legal matters, none of which concerned the properties now in dispute: (1) an insurance claim for stolen jewelry, (2) a condominium conversion of a two-unit building that plaintiff owned with his wife, (3) a wrongful eviction claim by a former tenant of a property owned by plaintiff and his wife and a related suit brought against them by the insurance company, and (4) negotiations to allow prepayment of a note carried by the seller of that same property. Plaintiff also recalled that defendant Nadel had represented him in a tax audit during the 1960s, though neither Berger nor Nadel remembered this case. The last active representation of plaintiff by defendants, which concerned the prepayment of the note, occurred in March or April of 1988.
In August 1988, a partner in defendants’ predecessor firm worked with Mrs. Schuman while defendant Berger, her usual contact person, was on vacation. Mrs. Schuman told him that she was the real owner of the Toledo Way building and plaintiff should clear her title. Defendant Nadel prepared a quitclaim deed to enable plaintiff to transfer his existing interest in the building and gave it to Mrs. Schuman. She in turn gave it to plaintiff, who signed it and returned it to his mother, but refused to have the deed notarized. The deed was placed in Mrs. Schuman’s legal file at defendants’ offices, where it was not discovered until the current litigation. According to plaintiff, he did not intend to relinquish his interest in Toledo Way when he signed the quitclaim deed in 1988, but was trying to alleviate his mother’s concerns that his wife (with whom his mother did not get along) might try to claim some interest in the property.
In 1994, Mrs. Schuman took over the payments on a $250,000 loan plaintiff had secured with the Bay Street property for the purpose of remodeling his own home on Clay Street. Mrs. Schuman told Berger she thought plaintiff should give up his interest in Bay Street based on her assumption of the loan obligation.
Mrs. Schuman told Berger in 1996 that when she died, she wanted the Bay Street property to go to plaintiff and the Toledo Way property to go to two of her deceased daughter’s adult children, Debbie and Stacey Kerreos (plaintiff’s nieces). She said she wanted to wait to see whether plaintiff would honor her request that he execute a deed transferring to her his interest in the property. In 1997, Berger asked plaintiff to come in to his office and sign a grant deed transferring his interest in Toledo Way to his mother. Plaintiff did so and the deed was recorded on July 22, 1998.
Also in 1998, Mrs. Schuman met with her accountant and decided to place all of her property in two family limited partnerships (FLIPs), which would reduce the amount of estate taxes her heirs would owe. She wanted to divide her estate equally between plaintiff and his children on the one hand and plaintiff’s nieces on the other. Mrs. Schuman’s intent was to create a FLIP for each side of the family and put certain pieces of real estate, of roughly equal value, into each.
When title searches were conducted on the properties to be placed in the FLIPs, Mrs. Schuman discovered that plaintiff was still named a joint tenant on the Bay Street property. Annoyed, she told Berger the property was hers and said she wanted plaintiff to get off the title. Berger relayed this request to plaintiff and asked him to execute a deed in favor of Mrs. Schuman. Plaintiff signed a grant deed prepared by defendants on July 31, 1998, which was filed August 7, 1998.
According to plaintiff, he was told by defendants that the grant deeds would help his mother with her taxes, and he was promised that he would get the Bay Street and Toledo Way properties “right back” with the advantage of a stepped up basis for capital gains tax purposes. According to Berger, plaintiff was not promised anything in exchange for the executed grant deeds, and was simply informed that it would please his mother if he signed.
Mrs. Schuman executed documents establishing the FLIPs on August 6, 1998. The Bay Street and Toledo Way properties were placed in the FLIP established for the benefit of plaintiff’s nieces, along with one of the Jackson Street condominiums. The FLIP established for plaintiff and his children contained the other Jackson Street condominium and the Calistoga property, which plaintiff had used frequently over the years and treated as his own. Berger claimed to have sent plaintiff a copy of the FLIP agreement to which he was a partner when the FLIP was established, and to have sent him a second copy of the agreement in May 2000. Plaintiff claimed not to have received a copy of any document showing which properties were in which FLIP, and to have not learned that Bay Street and Toledo Way had been placed in his nieces’ FLIP until September 2001.
Although Berger did not send plaintiff a copy of the FLIP agreement to which his nieces were partners, the omission of the Bay Street and Toledo Way properties from plaintiff’s agreement would have alerted him that he no longer had a legal interest in those properties.
Plaintiff began complaining to Berger that he was getting less than he was entitled to in the proposed distribution of his mother’s estate. In October 2001, defendants prepared an amendment to the trust to provide for an equalization of the amounts given to plaintiff on the one hand, and his nieces on the other. Berger told plaintiff in 2001 that he should contact another lawyer regarding his concerns about the estate. Berger sent plaintiff a letter to that effect in February 2002.
On April 2, 2002, plaintiff visited his mother, who was by then suffering from dementia, and spent the entire day with her. At the end of that visit, he prepared a letter to Berger for her signature, which stated, “I wish to have an appointment with you to discuss and execute the papers necessary to undo a mistake that has caused much grief in the family regarding my estate. I wish to deed back my son Howard’s interest in 2355 Bay Street and 85 Toledo Way. He had signed his interest over to me in order to help me obtain a tax benefit and was told I would deed it back. It is his property and should not be a part of my estate. He and my granddaughters Debbie and Stacey will share the balance of my estate not including Howard[’]s properties one half to each side after appraisals. I will leave it up to you if you want the other attorneys present and Debbie, Stacey, and Howard so that everyone will know of my decision and honor it to help bring peace to the family.”
In response to this letter, Berger met with Mrs. Schuman in person on April 3, 2002. Mrs. Schuman said she thought she had signed the letter, although she did not recall doing so. She did not want Berger to make any changes to her estate plan. She stated that she owned Bay Street and Toledo and that if she had wanted Berger to do something about those properties she would have telephoned him. Based on this conversation, Berger did not take any steps to transfer the properties to plaintiff.
On February 28, 2003, plaintiff filed a complaint against defendants, which contained causes of action for legal malpractice, misrepresentation, breach of contract under a third party beneficiary theory and breach of fiduciary duty. The first amended complaint filed April 25, 2003 alleged that plaintiff had an attorney-client relationship with defendants when he signed the grant deeds for the Bay Street and Toledo Way properties, that defendants had acted against plaintiff’s interests and had failed to adequately advise him of the consequences when he signed over his interest in Bay Street and Toledo Way, that defendants had made false representations to the effect that the transfer of the properties would be temporary only, that plaintiff was a beneficiary of the letter signed by Mrs. Schuman on April 2, 2002 asking Berger to transfer those properties back to plaintiff, and that defendants had failed to advise plaintiff to consult independent counsel before signing the grant deeds.
The case proceeded to a jury trial. Plaintiff called as a legal expert Richard Zitrin, who testified that defendants and plaintiff had a continuing attorney-client relationship by virtue of the cases that defendants had handled for plaintiff in the 1970s and 1980s and the expectation on plaintiff’s part that he could call defendants when a legal issue arose. Zitrin opined that defendants breached their duty of care and fiduciary duties when they asked plaintiff to sign the grant deeds. He explained that a client is entitled to believe that his attorney is acting in his best interests, and that defendants should have explicitly withdrawn from their representation of plaintiff before urging him to do something injurious to his position.
Richard Stratton, a legal expert called by the defendants, opined that defendants had continually represented Mrs. Schuman, but had performed only discrete projects for plaintiff, who was a former client. There was no obstacle to representing a client whose interests were adverse to a former client so long as the matters were not related and no confidential information about the former client was used. Here, there was no conflict of interest in asking plaintiff to sign the grant deeds in favor of Mrs. Schuman in 1997 and 1998, because defendants’ prior representation of plaintiff had nothing to do with those properties.
The jury returned a special verdict in favor of defendants. Plaintiff appeals.
DISCUSSION
Plaintiff raises a number of arguments regarding the special verdict form that was proposed by the defendants and adopted by the court. He also challenges the admission of hearsay evidence regarding his mother’s state of mind, and argues that such evidence must be excluded if the case is retried. We conclude that none of these issues require reversal.
I. “Delivery” of 1988 Quitclaim Deed
Although the first amended complaint sought damages based on plaintiff’s execution of the grant deeds in 1997 and 1998, the special verdict form asked the jury to determine whether plaintiff had already transferred ownership to the Toledo Way property by virtue of the unrecorded quitclaim deed that was executed in 1988. The first question on the verdict form asked, “Did Mr. Schuman deliver a quitclaim deed for Toledo Way to Bessie Schuman after August 29, 1988?” The jury answered yes, meaning that ownership of Toledo Way was actually transferred to Bessie in 1988. (See Chaffee v. Sorensen (1951) 107 Cal.App.2d 284, 289.)
Plaintiff argues that this question shows “bias.” He claims that while the evidence was clear he “delivered” the quitclaim deed as that term is commonly used, the verdict form failed to define “delivery” in its technical legal sense.
It is not clear whether this argument is raised as a separate ground for reversal or is simply prefatory to the other issues. We discuss it separately in an abundance of caution.
This argument is refuted by a special instruction that advised the jury, “You’ve heard evidence regarding the 1988 Toledo Way quitclaim deed. A deed does not have to be notarized or recorded in order for it to pass a person’s interest in the property. However, in order to pass this interest, a deed must be delivered by the [g]rantor to the [g]rantee. [¶] [¶] . . . . Delivery does not just refer to the physical delivery of the deed from the grantor to the grantee, it also requires that the grantor intended to transfer his interest in the property. [¶] The physical delivery of a deed from the grantor to the grantee creates an inference that the grantor intended to transfer the ownership to the grantee. This inference is rebuttable, and in the face of contrary evidence regarding circumstances surrounding the transaction, becomes a question of fact for the jury to decide. [¶] A party’s unexpressed subjective intent is not relevant. You must look at the objective circumstances that accompany the physical delivery of a deed from the grantor to the grantee to determine whether the grantor intended to transfer his interest in the property.” This instruction was an accurate statement of the law and the jury was not misled as to the legal meaning of “delivery.” (Chaffee v. Sorensen, supra, 107 Cal.App.2d at p. 289; 20th Century Plumbing Co. v. Sfregola (1981) 126 Cal.App.3d 851, 853.)
II. Verdict Form’s Pinpointing of Duty to Disclose in 1997 and 1998
Question Nos. 6-9 of the special verdict form concerned the causes of action for legal malpractice and breach of fiduciary duty. The jury was asked to determine whether plaintiff was a present client or a former client of defendants when defendants asked him to execute the 1997 Toledo Way grant deed and the 1998 Bay Street grant deed. If plaintiff was a former client on those dates, the jury was to determine whether any past matters in which defendants represented plaintiff were substantially related to the requests to execute the deeds. If plaintiff was a present client or had been represented in a matter substantially related to the execution of the deeds, the jury would determine whether defendants fell below the standard of care in requesting the execution of the deeds. The jury determined that plaintiff was a former client and that there were no past matters substantially related to the deeds, meaning the jury never reached the ultimate question of whether defendants breached the standard of care.
Plaintiff argues that the verdict form was defective because it limited the scope of the inquiry to 1997 and 1998, and did not permit the jury to find that defendants were negligent or breached a fiduciary duty at some earlier point in time, such as in 1988, when they prepared the quitclaim deed on Toledo Way. We disagree. Plaintiff’s first amended complaint sought damages for legal malpractice and breach of fiduciary duty based on defendants’ role in securing his execution of the 1997 and 1998 grant deeds. The verdict form appropriately asked the jury to determine whether defendants were representing plaintiff at the time or had previously represented him in a matter substantially related to the preparation of the deeds. (See Fox v. Pollack (1986) 181 Cal.App.3d 954, 959 [attorney’s duty to client depends on existence of attorney-client relationship]; Brand v. 20th Century Ins. Co./21st Century Ins. Co. (2004) 124 Cal.App.4th 594, 602 [where an attorney successively represents clients with adverse interests, and where the subjects of the two representations are substantially related, the need to protect the first client’s confidential information requires that the attorney be disqualified from the second representation].) It did not limit the jury’s consideration of earlier facts having some bearing on those issues.
To the extent plaintiff is arguing that defendants’ preparation of the 1988 quitclaim deed for Toledo Way supplied an independent basis for legal malpractice and breach of fiduciary duty, the trial court properly concluded there was “an insufficient nexus between any conflict of interest in the 1980s and any damage incurred later on.” The uncontradicted evidence showed that the 1988 quitclaim deed was not recorded, but was placed in a file in defendants’ offices after it was delivered to Mrs. Schuman by plaintiff. Although the deed would have been enforceable as between Mrs. Schuman and plaintiff during that period, neither of them acted upon it. There was no evidence suggesting that the prior execution of the quitclaim deed caused plaintiff to sign over his interest in the Toledo Way property by grant deed in 1997. Nor did the 1988 quitclaim deed cause plaintiff’s “loss” of that property by virtue of its placement in his nieces’ FLIP (the injury for which damages are sought in this lawsuit). The placement of the property in the FLIP was facilitated by the 1997 grant deed, not the 1988 quitclaim deed.
III. Omission of Tolling Issues from Verdict Form
Plaintiff notes that defendants “will undoubtedly respond that even if they were professionally negligent in the mid 1980s when they represented Mrs. Schuman in matters adverse to plaintiff, any claims are barred by the statue of limitations.” He argues that the verdict form should have allowed the jury to determine the facts that could potentially toll the relevant statute of limitations. Our resolution of the preceding issue disposes of this claim, because there is no nexus between any potentially time-barred claims from the 1980s and the damages sought in this lawsuit. Additionally, there is no reasonable probability that a jury presented with the question would have resolved the tolling issue in plaintiff’s favor with respect to such claims. (See Mayes v. Bryan (2006) 139 Cal.App.4th 1075, 1087-1088.)
Code of Civil Procedure section 340.6, subdivision (a) is the statute of limitations for legal malpractice claims and provides in relevant part, “An action against an attorney for a wrongful act or omission, other than actual fraud, arising in the performance of professional services shall be commenced within one year after the plaintiff discovers, or through the use of reasonable diligence should have discovered, the facts constituting the wrongful act or omission, or four years from the date of the wrongful act or omission, whichever occurs first. In no event shall the time for commencement of legal action exceed four years except that the period shall be tolled during the time that any of the following exist: [¶] (1) The plaintiff has not sustained actual injury; [¶] (2) The attorney continues to represent the plaintiff regarding the specific subject matter in which the alleged wrongful act or omission occurred.”
Because the jury found that defendants last represented plaintiff in 1988, that was the last date on which an act of legal malpractice could have been committed. The last year in which a lawsuit could be brought for malpractice arising during that representation ordinarily would be a maximum of four years later, in 1992. The limitations period could not have been tolled by defendant’s continuous representation under section 340.6, subdivision (a)(2) because defendants did not continue to represent plaintiff in any matter after 1988. And while the statutory period would have been tolled until plaintiff sustained an actual injury, the only injury alleged in this case was plaintiff’s loss of his ownership interest in Toledo Way and Bay Street, of which he was aware, by his own admission, no later than September 2001. He did not file this lawsuit until February 28, 2003, more than one year after his discovery of the facts constituting the wrongful act or omission. Even if we assume the loss of the property can somehow be linked to acts committed in the 1980s, and that such a cause of action was properly pled and proved, there is no reasonable probability that a jury instructed on the statute of limitations and tolling would have found the facts necessary to conclude the action was not time barred.
IV. Breach of Disclosure Duties
Plaintiff complains that the verdict form did not allow the jury to address whether defendants breached their duty of communication with him as a former client when they obtained the grant deeds in 1997 and 1998. He notes that his legal expert, Richard Zitrin, testified that because defendants had represented plaintiff in the 1980s, they should have advised him that they were no longer doing so before asking him to sign a deed that would adversely affect his interests. Plaintiff did not object to the verdict form on this ground and has forfeited the issue on appeal. (Mardirossian & Associates, Inc. v. Ersoff (2007) 153 Cal.App.4th 257, 277; Greer v. Buzghei (2006) 141 Cal.App.4th 1150, 1158.) We are not persuaded that he preserved the issue by proposing a general verdict form and his own special verdict form, as neither included a question regarding the duty to communicate with a former client.
In any event, it is not reasonably probable that plaintiff would have obtained a more favorable result if the verdict form had allowed the jury to return a finding that defendants breached their duty to specifically advise him of the lack of an attorney-client relationship in 1997 and 1998. (See Kostecky v. Henry (1980) 113 Cal.App.3d 362, 372-374.) The jury determined that defendants had last represented plaintiff in 1988. An attorney’s duty to communicate with clients “includes the duty to communicate to persons who reasonably believe they are clients to the attorney’s knowledge at least to the extent of advising them that they are not clients.” (Butler v. State Bar (1986) 42 Cal.3d 323, 329.) There is scant, if any, evidence to show that plaintiff could have reasonably believed he was defendants’ client almost 10 years after the last case in which they represented him had terminated, and there is even less to suggest that defendants knew of such a belief. Any defect in the verdict form regarding the disclosure issue was harmless.
V. Failure to Secure Verdict on Third Party Beneficiary Theory
On April 2, 2002, plaintiff prepared for Mrs. Schuman’s signature a letter addressed to defendant Berger stating that Mrs. Schuman wanted to make an appointment to discuss deeding back to plaintiff the Toledo Way and Bay Street properties. The first amended complaint contained a cause of action for “breach of third party beneficiary contract,” based on defendants’ alleged failure to follow the instructions in this letter. The special verdict form asked the jury in Question No. 12 to determine whether defendants followed Mrs. Schuman’s instructions in the letter, but the jury was only required to answer this question if, when resolving the legal malpractice claim, it found that plaintiff was either a present client of defendants or had been represented by defendants in a matter substantially related to the execution of the 1997 and 1998 deeds. The trial court explained that in its view, the third party beneficiary theory was subsumed within the claim for legal malpractice. Because the jury determined that plaintiff was neither a present client nor a former client in a substantially related matter, it did not resolve whether defendants had followed Mrs. Schuman’s instructions in the 2002 letter.
Plaintiff complains that the structure of the verdict form allowed the jury to circumvent the third party beneficiary claim and effectively deprived him of a verdict on that cause of action. He did not object to the order of the questions in the special verdict form or to the jury’s discharge, and has therefore forfeited this argument. (Mardirossian & Associates, Inc. v. Ersoff, supra, 153 Cal.App.4th at p. 277; Jensen v. BMW of North America, Inc. (1995) 35 Cal.App.4th 112, 131.)
We alternatively conclude that plaintiff is not entitled to remand because there is no reasonable probability he could have prevailed on a third party beneficiary theory based on the evidence presented.
“ ‘As a general rule, an attorney has no professional obligation to nonclients and thus cannot be held liable to nonclients for the consequences of the attorney’s professional negligence . . . .’ ” (Moore v. Anderson Zeigler Disharoon Gallagher & Gray (2003) 109 Cal.App.4th 1287, 1294 (Moore).) An exception to the general rule of nonliabilty has been recognized when a nonclient was the intended beneficiary of an attorney's services. (Id. at pp. 1294-1295.) Thus, “[t]he lack of privity will not necessarily preclude an intended beneficiary under a will from maintaining an action against the testator's attorney on either a contractual theory of third party beneficiary or a tort theory of negligence.” (Id. at p. 1295.)
An attorney’s duty to the beneficiary of a testamentary document is not automatic. (Moore, supra, 109 Cal.App.4th at p. 1295.) It involves a balancing of various factors, including (1) the extent to which the transaction was intended to affect the beneficiary; (2) the foreseeability of harm; (3) the degree of certainty that the beneficiary suffered injury; (4) the closeness of the connection between the attorney’s conduct and the injury suffered; (5) the moral blame attached to the attorney’s conduct; (6) the policy of preventing future harm; (7) the likelihood that imposing liability might interfere with the attorney’s ethical duties to the client; and (8) whether liability would impose an undue burden on the legal profession. (Ibid.) The weighing of these factors and the existence of a duty is essentially a question of law. (Id. at p. 1294.)
In this case, plaintiff’s third party beneficiary claim is based on a letter that he wrote to defendant Berger for his mother’s signature. The letter requested a meeting with Berger to discuss deeding back to plaintiff the Toledo Way and Bay Street Properties, but it did not authorize Berger or his firm to take any steps without first consulting with Mrs. Schuman. Berger testified that he met with Mrs. Schuman in person shortly after receiving the letter, at which time she told him she did not remember signing the letter and did not wish to change her estate plan. There is nothing improbable about this sequence of events in light of Mrs. Schuman’s Alzheimer’s disease, and there was no evidence contradicting Berger’s description of their meeting.
The evidence simply does not support a finding that the April 2, 2002 letter imposed a duty on Berger to secure a transfer of the property back to plaintiff. The letter, which was drafted by plaintiff, was not itself a binding contract, and the evidence does not support an inference that Berger acted negligently in his method of response. To impose liability based on the letter alone would interfere with Berger’s ethical duties to his client, Mrs. Schuman, because it would limit his ability to consult with her, ascertain her current wishes and provide legal advice based on those wishes. (See Moore, supra, 109 Cal.App.4th at p. 1295.) It would also impose an undue burden on the legal profession to conclude that a letter by a testator expressing a preliminary desire to change the allocation of property in an estate is itself enough to render an attorney liable to a third party beneficiary who would benefit from the change, regardless of whether the client subsequently changes her mind. (Ibid.)
VI. State of Mind Exception to Hearsay Rule
Plaintiff finally argues that that evidence of Mrs. Schuman’s state of mind regarding her ownership of the properties should be excluded as inadmissible hearsay on remand. Because we have concluded no remand is required we need not address this issue.
To the extent plaintiff is arguing that the state-of-mind evidence introduced during trial itself requires reversal, he has failed to support this argument with adequate citations to the record. (Del Real v. City of Riverside (2002) 95 Cal.App.4th 761, 768 [“The appellate court is not required to search the record on its own seeking error.”]; Mansell v. Board of Administration (1994) 30 Cal.App.4th 539, 545 [same].) Although the opening brief states in a conclusory fashion that “the trial court allowed voluminous hearsay to reach the jury,” and references a single letter drafted by Mrs. Schuman in which she criticized plaintiff, plaintiff does not argue that the letter was itself sufficiently prejudicial to require a retrial, and he does not describe the other “voluminous” hearsay. In any event, the trial court did not abuse its discretion in admitting statements by Mrs. Schuman that showed she believed she owned the Bay Street and Toledo Way properties, when such evidence was offered not to prove actual ownership, but to explain her conduct regarding estate planning. (See Evid. Code, § 1250, subd. (a)(2).)
DISPOSITION
The judgment is affirmed. Costs on appeal are awarded to defendants/respondents.
We concur. SIMONS, Acting P. J., STEVENS, J.
Retired Associate Justice of the Court of Appeal, First Appellate District, Division Five, assigned by the Chief Justice pursuant to art. VI, § 6 of the California Constitution.