Pursuant To The Law Of Preclusion, Defendants’ Conduct Was Sanctionable Where They Filed A New Complaint, Based On The Same Facts, To Relitigate Issues They Had Already Lost Through Previous Litigation.
In U.S. Bank Nat. Assn. v. Rosenblum, Case No. A161511 (1st Dist., Div. 5 February 23, 2022) (unpublished), the trial court issued Code Civ. Proc. §§ 128.5 and 128.7 sanctions in the amount of $11,900 against husband and wife defendants who filed a counter-complaint for quiet title and cancelation of a deed of trust, encumbering 50% of their real property, in a partition action brought by plaintiff trustee seeking to have the real property sold and the proceeds divided between it and defendants.
The problem for defendants was that the 1/5 DCA had already made a determination, in favor of trustee, as to these issues in a previous action brought by wife and based on the same set of facts. As a result, the trial court found defendants’ cross-complaint was “objectively and subjectively unreasonable” and filed for an improper purpose whereby defendants were trying to relitigate issues they had already lost.
The 1/5 DCA found no error in the trial court’s conclusion that the cross-complaint was frivolous and affirmed. The panel’s decision in the appeal from the previous action barred defendants’ cross-claims in the partition action pursuant to the law of preclusion – which helps to ensure that a dispute resolved in one case is not relitigated in a later case. ” (Samara v. Matar, 5 Cal.5th 322, 326 (2018); see also Bucur v. Ahmad, 244 Cal.App.4th 175, 191 (2016) [“Filing a new complaint based on the same facts to evade a ruling made in a previous litigation constitutes sanctionable conduct.”].)