Fourth District, Division 3 Strictly Enforces Jurisdictional Retention Dictates.
Code of Civil Procedure section 664.6, we hope, becomes well known to litigators and other attorneys hoping to summarily enforce settlement agreements in pending California actions. Without going into all of its nuances (which include strict requirements that the parties themselves assent to the settlement terms), there is a nice settlement retention proviso allowing for dismissal and settlement tradeoffs: “If requested by the parties, the court may retain jurisdiction over the parties to enforce the settlement until performance in full of the terms of the settlement.” That proviso was determinative in the next case, Hetman v. Santa Ana Unified School Dist. (Quintilone II), Case No. G040214 (4th Dist., Div. 3 Mar. 25, 2009) (unpublished).
In Hetman, client and attorney entered into a memorandum of understanding about fees/costs (MOU) in a pending case. Despite the MOU, attorney sued client in a separate action based on nonpayment of fees. Both sides wound their way towards a fee arbitration, but attorney sought to enforce the memorandum under section 664.6 in the pending action. However, attorney soon thereafter did dismiss the pending action (not the attorney v. client separate action). The trial court enjoined client from further encumbering his residence pending the outcome of the fee arbitration based on the MOU fee settlement in the pending action that was dismissed.
Client challenged the trial court’s jurisdiction to issue the order, with the Fourth District, Division 3 agreeing with the jurisdictional challenge and reversing the order on appeal.
Justice Aronson, writing for a 3-0 panel, found that attorney’s dismissal of the “pending action” ended the trial court’s jurisdiction. Nothing in the attorney-client MOU demonstrated that the parties authorized the trial court to retain jurisdiction in the pending action for MOU fee settlement enforcement. (Wackeen v. Malis, 97 Cal.App.4th 429, 439-440 (2002).) Because the “pending action” was dismissed in entirety before the injunction was entered, the trial court lacked jurisdiction to do what it did.