Real Property Law
Real Property Case Summary Updates
June 2020
California Case Summaries™ (https://cacasesummaries.com)
Monty A. McIntyre, Esq. is the publisher of California Case Summaries™ which provides short summaries, organized by legal topic, of every new published civil and family law case helping California lawyers easily keep up with the new case law in their practice areas. Monthly, quarterly and annual single-user and discounted multi-user subscriptions are available. Monty hasbeen a California civil trial lawyer since 1980, a member of ABOTA since 1995, and currently works as a full-time mediator, arbitrator and referee with ADR Services, Inc. (ADR) in ADR’s offices in San Diego, Irvine, and Los Angeles.
CALIFORNIA COURTS OF APPEAL
Landlord-Tenant
Hiona v. Super. Ct. (2020) _ Cal.App.5th _ , 2020 WL 2179481: The Court of Appeal denied a writ petition by defendants in the underlying unlawful detainer action, seeking to direct the trial court to vacate its orders denying defendant’s motions to reclassify the unlawful detainer actions as limited civil cases after the trial court had granted plaintiff’s motions for summary judgment for restitution of the premises based on defendants’ holdover after termination of their tenancies under the Ellis Act and applicable San Francisco rent ordinance provisions. The trial court properly denied defendants’ motions because Code of Civil Procedure, section 403.050(e) provides that nothing “in this section shall be construed to require the superior court to reclassify an action or proceeding because the judgment to be rendered, as determined at the trial or hearing, is one that might have been rendered in a limited civil case.” (C.A. 1st, May 6, 2020.)
Owens v. City of Oakland Housing, Residential Rent etc. Board (2020) _ Cal.App.5th _ , 2020 WL 2785022: The Court of Appeal affirmed the trial court’s order denying a petition for writ of mandamus seeking to overturn respondent’s decision that rooms rented to three unrelated individuals in petitioner’s house were subject to Oakland’s rent control ordinance. The trial court correctly determined the dwelling units petitioner rented to individual tenants were not exempt from rent control as a condominium or single family home under the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act (Civil Code, section 1954.52(a)(3)(A)). (C.A. 1st, May 29, 2020.)
Real Property
SLPR, L.L.C. v. San Diego Unified Port District (2020) _ Cal.App.5th _ , 2020 WL 2614622: The Court of Appeal affirmed the trial court’s order sustaining defendant State of California’s (State) demurrer to several causes of action, and its later judgment for defendant State following a bench trial in plaintiffs’ action against several defendants arising out of damage to their bayside properties in the City of Coronado (City) allegedly caused by dredging of the San Diego Bay. The Court of Appeal ruled that the trial court correctly sustained the demurrer on the basis that plaintiffs had failed to timely file a writ petition within 60 days of the California Coastal Commission’s concurrences with the Navy and Army’s consistency determinations regarding the dredging. It also held that the trial court correctly concluded that a 1931 judgment (Spreckels judgment) in favor of City and against J.D. and A.B. Spreckels Investment Company, owner of real property along the Bay’s shoreline and plaintiffs’ predecessor-in-interest, had fixed the boundaries between plaintiffs’ properties and the public tidelands, and therefore State’s affirmative defense of res judicata based on the Spreckels judgment applied to bar the remaining causes of action against the State. (C.A. 4th, May 22, 2020.)
Zieve, Brodnax & Steele, LLP v. Dhindsa (2020) _ Cal.App.5th _ , 2020 WL 2464755: The Court of Appeal reversed the trial court’s order regarding distribution of surplus funds of approximately $160,000 following a nonjudicial foreclosure sale of real property. The trial court erred in awarding all of the surplus funds to a junior creditor with a second deed of trust granted by the owners of an undivided 75 percent interest in the real property. The owner of an undivided 25 percent interest that was not encumbered by the second deed of trust was entitled to a proportionate share of surplus proceeds. (C.A. 5th, May 13, 2020.)