[00:00:00] Speaker 01:
In Ray mine heart each of you Edgar Augusto mine heart each of you appellant and pro se Andrew J maze council for appellee sunny acre LLC Would you like to reserve any time for reply And then when you settle in you may approach and begin

[00:00:32] Speaker 02:
Your Honours, first, thank you for your time.

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Given to this case for me, it's the first time I do an appeal in proper, so I've made some notes to guide myself.

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I believe, though, that I have placed most of my thoughts on the case in general and on the appeal brief.

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as completely as possible.

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I may have missed some arguments that could be raised, but then I'm not an attorney.

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What I do understand are some of the basic premises.

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I think that were foreshortened in the bankruptcy case with regards to the motion.

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and with regards to the case as a whole in general.

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I concentrated my limited research in those issues, which is what I perceived to be the misperceptions by the bankruptcy court, which to my mind resulted in the errors that I presented in my brief.

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As I understand it, at least in the context of a motion for relief from stay,

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The bankruptcy courts are to be centralized coordinators of actions in different forums, as per Curtis.

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But in this case, that was not the case.

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The bankruptcy court disposed of property

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whether ownership or possession in a debtor state, when there existed in the same bankruptcy case claims pending against those that sought control of the dispossession of that property, which arose from a prior bankruptcy case in which there remained ancillary jurisdiction

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given that it was a reason from the 362 stay in the prior case, violations, and the jurisdiction of the current case over a number of claims that were then, at the time of the order pending, in adversary proceedings initiated in the same court, and also in other forums that were scheduled and disclosed at the beginning.

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in which I as a debtor, as a debtor and plaintiff, I'm still the aggrieved party seeking recovery of the wrongfully leaned property.

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The court disposed of the debtor's state before ruling on any of those issues or even going or mentioning or reviewing any of the issues in other areas of the bankruptcy case itself and any of the other claims that were there, including, for example, the homestead exceptions and so on.

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when there was over $4 million of equity in the property that had been disposed.

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It seems to me that in the context of a motion for relief from state, which is rational as basically a motion to lift an injunction without going to the merits of the claims themselves,

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there was an inadequate inquiry as to the totality of circumstances, facts, and issues of other cases, which went totally unaddressed.

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And in fact, up to the point in the motion for relief from state order, they were not even reviewed or considered at all.

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What's before us is the granting of relief to allow the eviction to occur, right?

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That's correct.

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And then ultimately that occurred, no stay of the state court proceeding occurred, and the state court entered a judgment for eviction, ultimately.

[00:04:28] Speaker 02:
That's correct, yes.

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ownership of the property, equity in the property, all those other issues had been resolved years before and are not actually before us today, right?

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No, that's correct, yes.

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There is an issue, obviously, that arises from all this as to moodness, whether there is moodness or not on the appeal.

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under basically Article 3, you know, legal mudness, obviously there is no relief that can reverse this position of the

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of the property, but under an equitable relief, there are still many pending causes of actions that go to the property and whether possession or value on it, including any reversal of the dismissal of the bankruptcy case, which is still pending on appeal.

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In that sense, to my mind, relief, if any, is equitable as to the opinion whether there was or not error in the decisions, even though the practicalities of relief as to reversing the state are not possible.

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However— But that's, I guess, where I'm a little bit confused, and that is, no one is suggesting that whatever claims you want to assert are affected by the bankruptcy court's decision to lift the stay.

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And that's all that you're seeking review of here is the stay relief.

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That's all you can seek review of because that's the only order that you file the notice of appeal from.

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So whatever we decide, equitable bases don't apply to preclude you from proceeding.

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The question I have is what legal error was made in the court's decision that they had a colorable basis to go forward with the eviction, given that they had already foreclosed the property, transferred it, and had already commenced the eviction action,

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with the permission of the court and that at all, that's not before us.

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Any of all those facts are already established in the record.

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Yes, that's precisely the issue.

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There was an adversary proceeding pending in the bankruptcy court to reverse that lien, to avoid that lien or that title sale.

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But the lien wasn't an issue at this point.

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It was only the possession of the property.

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It was because the case started in order to recover the property from the prior bankruptcy violations of 362, actually occurring for foreclosure.

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But even if that's true, that isn't dependent upon possession.

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It is not dependent on possession, but given that myself as a party, as a network party, I had Homestead.

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I had prepaid leases.

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I had an option to purchase as well.

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I had a number of assets, including the claims against the police.

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Weren't all those interests junior to the deed of trust that was foreclosed?

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No, they were senior to it.

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All of those were predated the deal of trust and the foreclosure.

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They were standing for at least six years.

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Were they recorded?

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They were recorded, yes.

[00:08:13] Speaker 05:
But none of that's in front of us, does it?

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No, I understand.

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All that's in front of us is the question of whether stay relief was appropriately granted.

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That's the only issue we need to determine.

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And we have to accept it's true.

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that you don't own the property, that the lender has foreclosed and transferred the title of the property, and that you refuse to, at least at one point, you refuse to be evicted from the property.

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And so they brought the action to the bankruptcy court, because you had a bankruptcy case pending at that time, that said they needed stay relief.

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So they asked the court to grant that.

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And the court did.

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And you timely appealed from that determination.

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But all we're faced with is,

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Was there error in the bankruptcy court's decision to allow the eviction to proceed?

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To my mind, there was, simply because in the consideration of weighing all the factors that are required in currencies, all of the factors, or the majority of them, weighing in favor of not granting the state, mainly because there were issues undecided

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as to who owned the property, which were actually before the court pending.

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Those issues had been decided.

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They had not been decided because the adversary proceeding went to that precisely for rescission of that property.

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that loan, if precision on the tiller was still pending, if a violation of the 362 stay in 2020 had occurred and therefore could not allow the foreclosure sale to proceed,

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then why should the dispossession continue through a new D without first looking at whether there was any validity on that?

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Those were not at all touched by the order or the inquiry before the order.

[00:10:10] Speaker 05:
And that's because the eviction only affects the possession of the property, not the claims that you're asserting would still exist if you had a basis to pursue them, right?

[00:10:23] Speaker 05:
Yes.

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All we're looking at is whether the right to proceed with the eviction

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was wrongfully granted, not whether you have legitimate TILA claims or you have a basis to attack the prior sale or anything else.

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All we're concerned with is given the record that they had foreclosed and given the record that you were refusing to leave the property and that they had sold the property to a third party,

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Could the bankruptcy court reasonably conclude that there was a basis to allow them to proceed to evict?

[00:11:01] Speaker 02:
Yes, but they had not sold the property to a third party.

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They took it as a credit bid.

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So they were basically the main party.

[00:11:08] Speaker 04:
No, but that is a sale.

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That is a sale that affected the transfer.

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So that's the same point.

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That distinction does not, that difference does not have a distinction.

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The distinction that I believe affects it is that the issues as to

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whether they had a right to continue with the dispossession, were pending before the same Bankruptcy Court and not at all addressed before the ruling.

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But the Bankruptcy Court in granting relief from stay didn't preclude your ability to argue that the unlawful detainer was improper.

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You had a four-day trial on the unlawful detainer after the grant relief from stay was resolved.

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And that trial took place.

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It wasn't stayed and you lost.

[00:11:54] Speaker 02:
Yes, yes.

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It's on appeal, but it's on different grounds.

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I want to let you know, it's about three and a half minutes.

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So, yes.

[00:12:03] Speaker 05:
Did you want to reserve the rest of your time?

[00:12:04] Speaker 02:
Yeah, I would rather, yes.

[00:12:06] Speaker 02:
Okay.

[00:12:06] Speaker 02:
Thank you.

[00:12:07] Speaker 02:
Thank you.

[00:12:09] Speaker 02:
Right there.

[00:12:16] Speaker 00:
Good morning, Your Honor.

[00:12:18] Speaker 00:
My name is Andrew Mates.

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I present the aptly Sunnyacre LLC in this appeal.

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I want to focus the meat of my argument on mootness and as well first address some of the points raised from the bench and also discussed by Mr. Meinhart.

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Principally, it was a statement from Mr. Meinhart.

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in response to a question from the bench of what more can this court do for Mr. Beinhart in this appeal?

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It goes to the heart of this court's jurisdiction as an appellate court.

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And Mr. Beinhart's response was that there is no relief and that it revolves around equitable relief.

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That equitable relief then, if it were to ever come, would come from Superior Court of Los Angeles in a pending lawsuit that is still ongoing.

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I think that the mootness issue really, the materials are supplied to the bench in our motion for request for judicial notice, which all occurred after the appeal started.

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And I'm not gonna belabor that, but it really is also, I think, upfront acknowledged by the appellant on page one of his opening brief, where he requests that this court review the scope of the order and reverse the order, and this is the key language, before execution of judgment.

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On September 5th of last year, the execution of judgment happened by the Ventura County Sheriff, thereby really rendering this appeal ineffectual to give Mr. Meinhart any relief.

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That's constitutional mootness.

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I'm not going to belabor equitable mootness.

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The sole point on that is there was never a request from Mr. Meinhart to the bankruptcy appellate panel to stay enforcement of the relief from stay order.

[00:14:07] Speaker 05:
Council, just to make sure I understand your argument, that is just, it's moot because he no longer is in possession because you've actually removed him from the property and that's all that was in front of us, that was in front of the bank's court was, could the state court enter such an order?

[00:14:23] Speaker 05:
It has, it's been affected, there's nothing left for us to, if we were to reverse the order, we couldn't put him back in possession after the state court's already removed him.

[00:14:32] Speaker 00:
That's correct, your honor, that's correct and it's, I think,

[00:14:36] Speaker 00:
If the order was reversed, then Judge Clifford in the Bankruptcy Court goes, I don't know what I can do for you.

[00:14:51] Speaker 00:
You're already out.

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Turning then to, I think, which is kind of the merits of the case, merits of the appeal and the substance of the, whether there is an abuse of discretion, which is the appropriate standard in granting this order for relief,

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There's no dispute that the court applied the right test.

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You've got the Curtis factors, and that's adopted by the Ninth Circuit in the Castle Rock case.

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So there's no dispute there.

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And I think it came through in appellants, both in his papers and in oral argument here, that what he's asking for is a reweighing of the factors, which is something that this court sitting in the appellate posture does not do on an abuse of discretion standard.

[00:15:41] Speaker 00:
One thing not discussed at oral argument, but I think is a significant fact, is the timing of this bankruptcy petition, which happened right before the parties were going to select a jury.

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In California, unlawful detainer defendant has a right to a jury trial.

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There's nothing wrong with that.

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But I think as Judge Clifford recognized, it's quite uncommon that it takes a plaintiff three years from the inception of an unlawful detainer to reach a trial, to have to go to federal district courts and get orders of remand, to have to go to the bank's court.

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for emotional relief of stay, that's not all that uncommon.

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However, when you take it in the context of counsel is ready to pick a jury and we're informed, it is something very indicative under the Curtis Factors.

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Probably factor number 12, the harm to the creditor.

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if they can't proceed in the other forum, that weighs quite heavily.

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I don't think the papers have developed, nor do I think we've heard at all argument any abuse of discretion from Judge Clifford.

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And essentially, the court's not in a position to reweigh factors or reweigh evidence.

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So if there are any questions, I'm happy to answer.

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Otherwise, I'll submit.

[00:17:00] Speaker 05:
I don't have any more questions.

[00:17:02] Speaker 05:
Thank you very much.

[00:17:02] Speaker 05:
Thank you so much.

[00:17:07] Speaker 04:
Reply.

[00:17:09] Speaker 04:
Just under three and a half minutes left, sir.

[00:17:12] Speaker 02:
Yes, I'll probably just point out very briefly the fact that this position occurred.

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However, it's not only a point of

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of error, but when substantive rights are also being disposed by the Order, or affected by the Order rather under directs, also that impinges a more

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concerned weighing of the different factors, reweighing of the different factors by the court and that did not occur and should probably be considered in this particular case given that the order was so broad, I mean without any reference back to the court which was one of the objections to the form of the

[00:18:13] Speaker 02:
of the order that was not possible to address, given the premature entering of the order under the local rules.

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And given that, it was impossible to limit the effect, for example, of monetary claims that are still pending in court, whether those can be stayed or not.

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until everything develops in the rest of the case.

[00:18:39] Speaker 02:
Those are basically, thank you again for your time and thank you very much.

[00:18:44] Speaker 02:
Any other questions?

[00:18:45] Speaker 02:
No, another question.

[00:18:46] Speaker 02:
Any questions?

[00:18:47] Speaker 04:
Thank you very much.

[00:18:47] Speaker 04:
The matter will be deemed submitted.

[00:18:48] Speaker 04:
Thank you for your argument.