waste of time as sanctionable conduct

In preparation to my second visit to London with our Bar's Litigation Section (called "A Legal Week In London," highly recommended), I was sharing my experiences from my first trip in 2015 with colleagues, and the discussion quickly centered on what differences I had then observed between how the courts operate there and here.  My observations are from the ground up: I appear regularly in law & motion and trial settings, and so can only compare from a view of a field practitioner. I make this comment because our visiting group in London included all kinds of members, from transactional attorneys, to appellate practitioners, to in-house counsel, and even judges and one appellate judge. So, what may have appeared noticeable in differences for them, might not strike me a worthy of note at all.

Ellis Act Victory for SPOSFI -- Ordinance 68-15 Is Stricken

Another great victory for the Small Property Owners of San Francisco Institute and Zacks & Freedman: Rent Ordinance No. 68-15 is stricken and found as "unreasonable" as its predecessor, Ordinance No. 54-14. Look at the case's online record here, to see the October 2, 2015, order.

1:1 - Two Recent Attacks on Ellis Act Notice Went Different Ways

Within one week the Appellate Division of the San Francisco Superior Court issued two decisions addressing requirements for an Ellis Act eviction under S.F. Admin. Code, Section 37.9A(f), taking an evidently different approach in reading the section in two cases and achieving opposite results.

Anti-Ellis Act SF Ordinance Found Unconstitutional (Fed) and Unreasonable (State)

Federal Judge Breyer found the recently enacted San Francisco [anti] Ellis Act ordinance unconstitutional in a memorandum published on October 21, 2014. (Scribd copy). It is interesting that the court addressed the application of ordinance's formula as bringing counterintuitive results in amounts payable to the tenants (see page 8 of the memo), in line with the hypotheticals I made in my June post. In February, state Judge Quidachay found the ordinance "unreasonable." (Rent Board copy).

Update: the Rent Board issued a bulletin confirming that the subject payment requirements under the new ordinance are currently off, and the payments proceed under the prior scheme.

Update 2-20-15: on the state trial court level, demurrer to Jacoby's petition is overruled, on the distinction between characterizing the payment to evicted tenants as "unreasonable" or "prohibitive."

Update 3-25-15: the Rent Board had the decision on demurrer in Jacoby case published as well, but what is more interesting is the annual report, issued March 23, 2015, covering the statistics on eviction notices filed from March 1, 2014, through February 28, 2015. Page 2 shows the impact this unreasonable [state court] and unconstitutional [Fed. court] legislation had on the housing: 48% decline in filed notices under the Ellis Act cause for eviction. For the short time the legislation was alive, it slashed the total number of a whole of Ellis Act filings in half--a huge impact by all means.

Update 6-14-15: the Rent Board caps proposed total payment amounts at $50,000. More on this here.
Update 10-2-15: the court strikes this new 50K cap proposal, as even more unreasonable than the original regulation (Coyne case, CPF-15-514382)

Update 3-21-17: the court of appeals affirmed the trial court's decision in Coyne and Jacoby, invalidating both 54-14 and 68-15 ordinances.



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More real property posts

Your options and available strategies in handling evictions will depend on your case's particular facts. If you want to learn on your options, rights, and obligations in contesting or preserving your real property rights, including the Ellis Act evictions, make your first step toward taking control over the circumstances, and call my office at (415) 987-7000. I will be glad to assist in guiding you through the jungle. The only thing you can't afford is to stay put and uninformed. My office provides a confidential assessment of your particular scenario, free of charge, and I will share with you the results of the analysis along with my thoughts on available solutions.

Access to UK Caselaw And Beyond

If you need to look up a case decided in United Kingdom, try this free database. While there, look at the right column, entitled "World Law Resources," it has links to a collection of world jurisdictions.

Legal Paper Size is ... Illegal. Foolscap!

Today, for the first time, my complaint was not accepted for filing because some of the pages were presented on legal size paper. The lease was printed on an old "long" form, requiring the legal size, and, while I used to have those exhibits successfully filed before, my luck ended today. The reason is not even a law, but the technology: I was told that the scanning company complains about the legal size, so all non-letter sized papers are now prohibited, in order not to upset the scanners. There you have it, the paper size called "legal" is not legal after all. I made a new copy of the long pages, reducing them to 8.5" x 11," and the filing went through, but, while I waited in line, I tried to look the subject up, and here are my findings.

In re: Christmas Trees

In the spirit of this season, I want to share a short post on the subject of Christmas trees. Decorating a tree seems to be an ancient tradition, predating Christ himself, and a custom of having a Christmas Tree also seems to exist for several centuries, yet the appearance of Christmas celebration in the US law is not that old--the oldest cases I was able to find only date back to 1879.

e-Filing comes to San Francisco, hopefully without Jim Crow laws

Filing court papers online (termed as "e-filing") is a very useful feature. It was implemented already 10 years ago in the Federal courts, through the so called ECF/Pacer system. The efficiency of ECF/Pacer was recently put on the test, during the Federal Government's shutdown, allowing the courts to remain functional. In his address to the bar, Chief Judge Jaroslovsky commented that he would be writing a much different letter, should no eFiling system be in place at the time of the government's closure.

[UPDATE 11-5-14] 3 vendors are finally approved for the SF Court, in addition to the previously approved sole provider "File & Serve Xpress." Given the e-filing becomes mandatory in this court starting December 8, it's about time to get the providers on board.

[UPDATE 7-24-14] The voluntary e-filing became available on almost all kinds of cases, and I have personally successfully filed my first document through this system today.

[UPDATE 1-27-14] The "mandatory" e-filing is changed to "voluntary," while the second provider is getting up and running. New estimate for mandatory e-filing's cut-off date is June 30, 2014.

[UPDATE 1-6-14] San Francisco Court moves forward with one vendor and announces an additional vendor selected "through a competitive process." Competitor's name is not yet disclosed. Expansion of the mandatory e-filing kicks in on January 27, 2014.

Ghostwriting in Federal Courts in California - allowed, disfavored, or banned?

Attorney's ghostwriting, a practice for an attorney to draft documents for client's submission in court without revealing who actually wrote the documents, becomes more and more acceptable as a form of practice and is now generally allowed in California (Cal. R. of Ct., Rs 3.36, 3.37), subject to some reasonable ethical considerations. If you ask BAR for an advice, they would refer you to Los Angeles Bar Association's publications on the subject, such as this one from 1999 and a fresh 2012 update. Yet, the view on ghostwriting practice in the Federal courts of this same state remains unsettled.

$1.7 million default judgment is possible, even after a 473(b) motion.

Obtaining a default judgment is not easy. And if the judgment debtor later moves to set default and a judgment aside, especially if done on "mandatory" grounds of attorney's mistake [CCP 473(b)], courts often read it as equally a mandatory requirement to grant the requested relief. Often, but not always. This recent case presents a rare situation, when a simple act of submitting a declaration with an acknowledgement of fault did not help. The case is even more unique because of its facts: the judgment at stake was for a significant amount of $1.7 million, and the party asking to set it aside submitted not one, but several declarations regarding its attorney's fault.

Involuntary Un-Servitude

There is a recent move in the State of New York to increase the age limit for judges, to allow them to serve beyond the currently imposed 70 years. New York Times' article states that there are more than 30 states, plus D.C., that have an age limit on jurists. I found the article very interesting: it gives a reader a broad set of facts and, at least to me, feels like an exam set, inviting to "discuss this" and spot possible issues. I came up with these: