Plaintiff Kept Going After Earlier Sanctions Tentative For $38,080 Was Dismissed For Procedural Defects.
This next post counsels litigants and their counsel that there is a point where the battle has been lost, under penalty of having sanctions imposed for further litigation—which is exactly what happened.
In Ledesma v. JPMorgan Chase, Case No. B254614 (2d Dist., Div. 7 June 15, 2015) (unpublished), plaintiff and his attorney were both sanctioned $60,000 under CCP §§ 128.7(b)(1) [improper litigation purpose] and (b)(3) [no evidentiary support for allegations in a pleading], after the trial judge had earlier indicated a tentative to impose $38,080 in 128.7 sanctions—but which tentative had to be denied without prejudice because of some procedural defects. Plaintiff and his counsel still kept going,
with the record getting worse and worse, with years of efforts (including personal bankruptcies) being used to stymie foreclosure to a lender, waiting over 5 years post-default to seek a loan modification (hardly timely under the Homeowners Bill of Rights), requiring a buyer at a nonjudicial foreclosure to actually obtain an unlawful detainer eviction judgment (at considerable expense), and trying yet another personal bankruptcy in violation of a prior 2-year bankruptcy bar set by a prior bankruptcy judge (with comments on jurists confronting this issue being fairly caustic).
The $60,000 sanctions award was affirmed on appeal, with the appellate court chastising plaintiff/his counsel for not learning from the vacated prior tentative against them both. Guess this one could be summarized as “enough is enough” based on the tenor of the opinion.