Mahdavi v. State
| Decision Date | 21 July 2003 |
| Docket Number | D040432. |
| Court | California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
| Parties | KAMAL B. MAHDAVI, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. STATE OF CALIFORNIA et al., Defendants and Respondents. |
APPEAL from an order of the Superior Court of San Diego County, Kim G. Dunning, Judge (judge of the Superior Court of Orange County assigned by the Chief Justice pursuant to article VI, section 6 of the California Constitution), motion for recusal by plaintiff and appellant Kamal B. Mahdavi, and request by defendant and respondent Ralphs Grocery Company for costs on appeal. Super. Ct. No. GIC777032.
Order denying Mahdavi's motion to vacate judgment as void affirmed, recusal motion denied, and request for costs granted. Mahdavi declared a vexatious litigant.
Plaintiff in propria persona Kamal B. Mahdavi filed an expansive and broadly cast complaint against numerous defendants, including various public entities, private companies and individuals. Because Mahdavi named as defendants a judge and a subordinate judicial officer of the Superior Court of San Diego County, the Judicial Council of the State of California (Judicial Council) transferred the matter to the Honorable C. Robert Jameson, Presiding Judge of the Superior Court of Orange County, who then reassigned the matter to the Honorable Kim G. Dunning at that same court.
After the transfer of the case and its reassignment to the court, a number of defendants challenged Mahdavi's pleadings by demurrers and motions to strike. Following a hearing at which Mahdavi was present, the court confirmed its tentative ruling sustaining the demurrers, dismissed a number of defendants with prejudice, and granted Mahdavi 30 days' leave to amend his complaint as to his claims against the remaining defendants. Mahdavi did not amend his complaint after he was served with notice of the court's ruling, and the court thereafter dismissed the complaint with prejudice and entered judgment in favor of all of the defendants.
Mahdavi challenged the judgment of dismissal by filing a motion to set aside the judgment as void under Code of Civil Procedure section 473 and to appoint a new judge. Mahdavi appeals from the order denying that motion. He has also filed in this court a motion seeking recusal of the justices assigned to this matter.
Mahdavi contends the denial of his motion to vacate the judgment was an abuse of the court's discretion because the judgment was void for the following reasons: (1) Judge Dunning lacked jurisdiction to enter the judgment of dismissal because the Judicial Council's assignment of the case to Presiding Judge Jameson "did not include the power to reassign the case again to another judge," and thus the court had not been lawfully "organized"; and (2) the court violated his due process rights by (a) issuing "contradictory" and "predetermined" demurrer rulings, (b) "impounding" the legal papers he filed in response to the defendants' challenges to his complaint "in order not to consider the evidence presented by him"; and (c) failing to notify him of the court's order sustaining the demurrers and granting him 30 days' leave to amend his complaint. Mahdavi also claims his complaint was legally sufficient. We find the facts do not require the recusal of the justices assigned to this matter, and we affirm the court's order denying Mahdavi's motion to vacate the judgment. Because we need not, and do not, reach the issue of whether the court properly sustained the demurrers to Mahdavi's complaint, we affirm the judgment of dismissal.
In October 2001, acting in propria persona, Mahdavi filed a 57-page complaint titled, "The Complaint for the Conspiracy to Deprive the Plaintiff of His Constitutional and the Statutory Rights." He named 30 defendants, including various public entities (such as the State of California, the County of San Diego, the Chula Vista Police Department, and the San Diego Police Department), hotels and property management firms, individuals, and retail establishments and service providers.1
In his complaint, Mahdavi alleged the defendants engaged in a massive, multifaceted conspiracy to "neutralize the . . . efforts of [Mahdavi] to write the facts that undermine the status quo and to publish them." He claimed the alleged conspirators subjected him to constant unlawful surveillance for the purpose of collecting information about him that could be used to prevent him from seeking employment, and thereby cause him to exhaust his "meager resources" that were indispensable to his writing, of which the police allegedly disapproved. Other alleged conspiratorial acts included: the remote control of appliances and toilets in premises that Mahdavi rented; the infection of Mahdavi with seven types of liquid, powdery, and gaseous poisons introduced into his living space through wall capillary tubes, the ventilation systems and other means; similar infection by police outside his rented premises, and by librarians who "[wore] the powder that causes his allergy and approached him"; the depletion of his financial resources by convincing certain stores not to stock his preferred food items in order to force him to buy the foodstuffs from more expensive retailers; the introduction of teenage girls with the goal of implicating him in statutory rape; the prevention of his getting sound rest in various downtown motels and apartments by planting undercover agents in neighboring rooms, and instructing them to bang on the wall, slam doors, and drop heavy objects on the floors of apartments above his; and a successful effort to tempt him into buying poisoned crab legs that had been soaked in a harmful chemical and then refrozen.
Because Mahdavi named as defendants a judge and a subordinate judicial officer of the Superior Court of San Diego County, the Judicial Council transferred the matter to Presiding Judge Jameson. Presiding Judge Jameson reassigned the matter to the trial judge in this matter, Judge Dunning.
A number of defendants thereafter challenged Mahdavi's pleadings by filing demurrers and motions to strike. On January 23, 2002, after issuing a tentative ruling that sustained the demurrers, the court heard oral argument on those matters. Mahdavi was present during the hearing.
The court's minute order shows that after hearing oral argument, the court dismissed the complaint with prejudice as to 12 of the 30 defendants that Mahdavi named in his complaint.2 As to the remaining 18 defendants, the court sustained the demurrers on the ground Mahdavi had only alleged a broad conspiracy without clearly identifying any independently viable cause of action. With respect to the claims against the 18 remaining defendants, the court granted Mahdavi 30 days' leave to amend his complaint. 1. Notice of the court's January 23, 2002 rulings
On February 1, 2002, counsel for defendants City of Chula Vista and the Chula Vista Police Department (together Chula Vista) prepared, filed, and served on Mahdavi by mail a notice formally informing him of the court's January 23, 2002 rulings. The proof of service by mail shows that Chula Vista mailed the notice of ruling to Mahdavi at the address he provided on the first page of his complaint.
Mahdavi did not amend his complaint. On March 28, 2002, more than 50 days after Chula Vista served Mahdavi (on February 1 of that year) with notice of the court's January 23, 2002 rulings, Chula Vista's counsel, Scott Patterson, served Mahdavi with notice of Chula Vista's intent to appear ex parte before Judge Dunning on April 3, 2002, for the purpose of requesting dismissal of the complaint and entry of judgment.
On April 3, 2002, the court granted Chula Vista's ex parte request, and ordered that Mahdavi did not respond to the notice of hearing that Chula Vista served on him, and he did not appear at the hearing. The court entered a judgment of dismissal with prejudice in favor of all defendants on that same date.
Mahdavi challenged the judgment of dismissal by filing a motion asking the court to set aside the judgment as void under Code of Civil Procedure section 473 and to appoint a new judge through the Judicial Council. In his motion, Mahdavi claimed the judgment was void (1) because Judge Dunning did not have jurisdiction to hear the matter, and (2) because of alleged due process irregularities with respect to the filing of the parties' papers and the court's consideration thereof, as well as to the provision of notice regarding the court's January 23, 2002 rulings, including the granting of 30 days' leave to amend the complaint.
On May 28, 2002, after conducting a hearing, the court denied Mahdavi's motion to vacate the judgment as void.3 Mahdavi did not appear at the hearing.
In June 2002, Mahdavi appealed from the order denying his motion to vacate the judgment as void. He thereafter filed in this court his pending "Motion that Each Appellate Justice Assigned to This Appeal Should, After Considering the Facts of the Motion, Decide Whether His, or Her, Recusal Is Required" (recusal motion).
If a judgment is void, it is subject to collateral attack by means of a postjudgment motion under Code of Civil Procedure section 473 to vacate...
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