When you're an attorney and the Court of Appeal repeatedly mentions your name in its opinion, that's rarely a good sign.
The opinion's opening sentence gives you a sense of what the Court of Appeal's (understandable) attitude might be towards this case. It reads: "In this sixth appeal arising from a simple unpaid rent case that began in 2014 . . . ." Given that introduction, you know that the Court of Appeal is likely to be miffed at at least one of the parties; in particular, whomever it blames for the repeated litigation.
And the Court of Appeal seems to think that the culprit here is the appellant, United Grand Corporation.
Once you read the opinion, you can readily understand why.
In essence, Malibu Hillbillies and Marcie Stoloff allegedly fail to make some rental payments, and so get sued, and a default judgment is entered against them. They eventually try to simply pay the judgment, but United Grand Corporation isn't having it, and instead wants them to pay the judgment plus "close to $2 million in attorney fees." Which the trial courts are most decidedly not psyched about; indeed, "as a partial terminating sanction, the trial court issued an order striking United Grand’s prayer for attorney fees due to 'pervasive misconduct' by United Grand, its attorney or both." Thereafter, "the trial court incorporated its March 17, 2017 ruling into the judgment and specifically found that United Grand’s attorney had committed misconduct."
Neither the trial court nor the Court of Appeal was shy about identifying that attorney: Cyrus Sanai. Whose name might perhaps be familiar to you from other litigation. (For example, as today's opinion explains, "As detailed in our previous opinion, “Despite the essentially uncontested nature of the case, [UGC’s] attorney, Cyrus Sanai, continued to generate a large amount of attorney fees on the case.” (United Grand Corp. v. Malibu Hillbillies, LLC (2019) 36 Cal.App.5th 142, 146 (United Grand).)"
The Court of Appeal mentions Mr. Sanai's name around a half-dozen times and his role in this whole morass throughout. As I said at the outset: Never a good sign.
You can look up Mr. Sanai's disciplinary history here if you wish. It's actually fairly depressing that the original charges against him were filed over eight years ago and are still simply pending. The docket reflects a long, long history -- just like the present appeal.
In the end, though, today's opinion at least ends the civil matter. Ms. Stoloff had to pay her $56,000 or so in unpaid rent etc., so she's out that money. But today the Court of Appeal affirms the award to her of $165,000+ of her attorney's fees, plus awards her costs on appeal.
Which doesn't likely make her even, of course: she still had to spend the money.
But it's nonetheless something; at a minimum, she might take it as a little bit more cosmic justice than she'd received previously.
