Gruber v. Gruber
| Decision Date | 30 April 2020 |
| Docket Number | B294617 |
| Citation | 261 Cal.Rptr.3d 819,48 Cal.App.5th 529 |
| Court | California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
| Parties | Loretta GRUBER, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Sandra GRUBER et al., Defendants and Appellants. |
Certified for Partial Publication.*
Schumann Rosenberg, Eric Arevalo, Jeffrey P. Cunningham, and Marlys K. Braun, Costa Mesa, for Defendants and Appellants Sandra Gruber and Kenneth Gruber.
Prindle Goetz Barnes & Reinholtz, Jack R. Reinholtz, Gopal S. Patel, and Lauren S. Gafa, Long Beach, for Defendant and Appellant Continental Precision Stamping, Inc.
Defendant and Appellant Bradford Gruber, in pro. per.
Tesser Grossman, Brian M. Grossman, Los Angeles, and Gina M. Simas for Plaintiff and Respondent Loretta Gruber.
The anti-SLAPP statute empowers a trial court to dismiss a claim if the claim (1) falls within the statute’s scope and (2) lacks " ‘minimal merit,’ " which is assessed by "accept[ing] the plaintiff’s evidence as true." ( Code Civ. Proc., § 425.16 ; Baral v. Schnitt (2016) 1 Cal.5th 376, 385, 205 Cal.Rptr.3d 475, 376 P.3d 604 ( Baral ).)1 When a plaintiff sues for malicious prosecution, she must demonstrate, among other things, that she was previously sued "without probable cause." ( Siebel v. Mittlesteadt (2007) 41 Cal.4th 735, 740, 62 Cal.Rptr.3d 155, 161 P.3d 527 ( Siebel ).) Although the question whether there was probable cause to sue is "a question of law to be determined by the court," that question is necessarily evaluated by reference to "the facts known to the" party who previously brought suit. ( Sheldon Appel Co. v. Albert & Oliker (1989) 47 Cal.3d 863, 875, 878, 254 Cal.Rptr. 336, 765 P.2d 498 ( Sheldon ).) Where, as here, there is a dispute over what facts the previously suing parties knew at the time they brought suit, a trial court faced with an anti-SLAPP motion by those parties must decide whether the malicious prosecution plaintiff has shown that her allegation that those parties lacked probable cause has "minimal merit." How is this to be done? We hold that a trial court should do so by (1) resolving all factual disputes regarding what the previously suing parties knew by accepting the plaintiff’s evidence as true and (2) through that lens, evaluating whether the prior claim(s) were legally and factually tenable. Applying this holding, we conclude that the plaintiff here has proven that her malicious prosecution claim has minimal merit and that the trial court acted properly in denying the anti-SLAPP motions to dismiss that claim.
Bradford Gruber (Bradford) and Loretta Gruber (Loretta) married in July 1997, Loretta filed for dissolution in June 2015, and judgment was entered in April 2018.2
Throughout his life, Bradford has been close with—and dependent upon—his parents, Sandra Gruber (Sandra) and Kenneth Gruber (collectively, the parents). Bradford draws a salary by working for the parents’ company, Continental Precision Stamping, Inc. (Continental). When a tree fell on their family’s home in 2002, Bradford and Loretta moved their family into the parents’ then-unoccupied home on Sunset Boulevard in the Brentwood Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles. And after his separation from Loretta, Bradford moved back in with his parents rent-free and used one of their other, empty houses to store his belongings rent-free.
While Bradford and Loretta were married, the parents gave Bradford and his family $751,278.80 in money or services that can be grouped into four categories.
a. The first, four-month "lease"
Immediately after Bradford and Loretta moved into the Sunset Boulevard home in September 2002, Bradford signed a four-month lease with one of Sandra’s companies called Creative Concepts. The lease set forth a monthly rent of $7,500. Although Bradford wrote four checks for $7,500, the parents never cashed those checks. Bradford nevertheless presented the lease and checks to his homeowner’s insurance company to obtain payments for living expenses. Their deceit worked, as the insurance company cut checks for $18,000, which Bradford then gave to Sandra.
b. The second, month-to-month "lease"
After the first lease expired in January 2003, Bradford signed a second, open-ended, month-to-month lease directly with Sandra. The lease set forth a monthly rent of $2,500. Loretta wrote three checks for the first three months, but the checks were for $7,500—not $2,500. Once again, Sandra never cashed those checks. Bradford and Loretta nevertheless listed $2,500 as their monthly rent expense in applications to obtain financial aid from their daughter’s private school.
c. Total "owed" under both leases
The parents calculated the amount of unpaid rent under these "leases" as $364,500.
Between June 2008 and August 2015, Continental gave Bradford a total of $341,078.80 in cash pursuant to 53 individual, zero-interest promissory notes executed by Bradford alone. The content of the 53 notes is identical; curiously, some of them contain the same error regarding a nonexistent date (September 31) despite purporting to be executed a year apart. Bradford agreed to repay the notes by having $100 per week deducted from his salary. The salary deductions totaled $13,700, such that Bradford continued to owe $327,378.80 on the promissory notes to Continental.
In April 2011, Sandra gave Bradford four payments totaling $20,875. Each payment was memorialized by a written "promise to pay," although Bradford only signed three of the four promises.
On unspecified dates while Bradford and Loretta were still married, the parents paid $24,825 in "construction-related fees" to Bradford and unspecified "third parties" "on behalf of Bradford and Loretta toward completion of construction" of their tree-crushed home.
1. The complaint
In May 2016, which was less than a year after Loretta filed for dissolution, the parents and their company (Continental) sued Bradford and Loretta for $751,278.80 in unpaid debt as well as for punitive damages (the 2016 Lawsuit). More specifically, they brought (1) five claims—that is, three breach-of-contract claims and two money-lent claims—to recover the debts outlined above, and (2) two claims for fraud. The fraud claims allege that Bradford and Loretta engaged in promissory fraud by "express[ly]" "represent[ing]" and "expressly assur[ing]" the parents that they "would begin to re-pay the debt[s] within a reasonable time[ ] once they had the financial ability to do so," while harboring a "secret intention" never to repay those debts.
2. Prosecution of the lawsuit
Against Loretta, the parents propounded 22 requests for production, 71 requests for admission, and 54 requests to admit the genuineness of documents; they also deposed her. Against Bradford, they propounded no discovery whatsoever and did not depose him.
3. Resolution of the lawsuit
On June 6, 2017, Bradford executed a Stipulation for Judgment. In that stipulation, Bradford "acknowledge[d]" that he and Loretta "owed" the parents $751,278.80 as a "joint debt," and agreed to pay the parents $380,000 of that amount.
Five days before Bradford executed the stipulation, his lawyer had sent Loretta’s lawyer a copy of the proposed stipulation as well as a letter asserting (1) Bradford’s "intent to sign" the stipulation and to acknowledge $380,000 as a "community debt," and (2) Bradford’s further intent to hold Loretta liable for half of that debt "in the parties’ [pending] dissolution action."
The same date that the trial court entered the stipulation, the parents and their company dismissed Loretta from the lawsuit without prejudice.
As noted above, during the entire pendency of the 2016 Lawsuit, Bradford was living with his parents rent-free.
In May 2018, Loretta sued Bradford, his parents and Continental for malicious prosecution of the 2016 Lawsuit.3 More specifically, Loretta alleged that the parents and Continental initiated the 2016 Lawsuit "without probable cause," that they "acted maliciously" in filing suit to "mis-characterize hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts as loans" in order to exact "vengeance against Loretta for filing for divorce," and that she was "damaged" by the suit. Loretta sought compensatory as well as punitive damages.
In August 2018, the parents, Continental and Bradford each filed separate motions to dismiss Loretta’s complaint under the anti-SLAPP statute. The parents’ and Continental’s separately filed motions as well as the accompanying declarations and exhibits were nearly identical. Loretta filed a consolidated opposition to the motions filed by the parents and Continental and a separate opposition to the motion filed by Bradford. The parents and Continental each filed separate replies and further declarations with exhibits. The parents and Continental also filed identical evidentiary objections.
In a comprehensive 23-page tentative ruling that the trial court later adopted as its final ruling, the court denied the anti-SLAPP motions. The court ruled that Loretta’s malicious prosecution lawsuit arose from "protected activity" within the reach of the anti-SLAPP statute, but found that Loretta had established that her malicious prosecution claim had "minimal merit" because she had adduced sufficient evidence to establish that (1) the parents and Continental—the plaintiffs in the 2016 Lawsuit—had initiated that lawsuit without probable cause and with malice, and (2) Bradford, although not a plaintiff in the 2016 Lawsuit, had nevertheless conspired with his parents to prosecute and settle that case.
The parents, Continental and Bradford filed timely appeals.
The parents, Continental and Bradford argue that the trial court erred in denying their anti-SLAPP motions because, in...
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