Judge: Blaine K. Bowman, Case: 37-2019-00019348-CU-BC-NC, Date: 2023-08-11 Tentative Ruling

SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA,

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SOUTH BUILDING TENTATIVE RULINGS - July 13, 2023

07/14/2023  10:00:00 AM  N-31 COUNTY OF SAN DIEGO

JUDICIAL OFFICER:Blaine K. Bowman

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Civil - Unlimited  Breach of Contract/Warranty Motion Hearing (Civil) 37-2019-00019348-CU-BC-NC YU XIANG WANG VS QI [IMAGED] CAUSAL DOCUMENT/DATE FILED: Motion to Be Relieved as Counsel of Record, 06/06/2023

The hearing on this matter is continued to Friday, October 27, 2023 at 1:30 p.m. in Department N-31 to provide time for attorneys Valerie Hong and Mark Simpliciano of the law firm Garcia Hong Law APC (collectively, Counsel) to make additional efforts to confirm the address of their client, Caifeng Qi (Ms.

Qi). Counsel shall file a supplemental declaration on or before Friday, September 15, 2023 identifying the additional efforts that have been made to confirm the address of Ms. Qi. Failure to file such a supplemental declaration will result in the motion summarily being taken off-calendar.

The declaration of Counsel indicates that Counsel was unable to confirm Ms. Qi's address after mailing papers to her last known address and calling her last known telephone number. In addition, the declaration indicates: (1) 'Garcia Hong Law has mailed, emailed, called, and reached out to all known contacts.' (2) 'Garcia Hong Law has expended time and resources to mail, call, and reach out to the client with no response since May 2023.' 'All known contacts' is too vague a statement to enable the Court to assess whether adequate efforts have been made to locate and inform Ms. Qi of the upcoming hearing date or to confirm her address.

'Contacts' plural seems to indicate that multiple people were contacted, but it is possible that Counsel does not know any contacts, such that the qualifier of having reached out to 'all known contacts' could, in fact, mean no one in particular. Moreover, by utilizing parallel structure as to 'mailed, emailed, called, and reached out' it is impossible to tell which methods of contacts were employed to get in touch with each of the 'known contacts.' There is simply too much vagueness in this assertion to enable the Court to assess whether efforts were adequate.

While the Court is mindful that it 'expend[s] time and resources' of Counsel to mail, call, and reach out to Ms. Qi and her contacts, the Court is also mindful that the plaintiff(s) in this case had to incur the expense of initially serving Ms. Qi with the lawsuit, and, as a result of that effort Ms. Qi currently has a record address on file – the address of her law firm. To the extent that her law firm, which voluntarily accepted Ms. Qi as a client, will be leaving the lawsuit without having provided a valid, up-to-date address for both the plaintiff(s) and this Court to contact Ms. Qi as a party to this lawsuit, the Court is unimpressed by considerations that it expends the time and resources of Counsel to confirm an address when the alternative will foist the expense of doing so on the plaintiff(s) (who may attempt to serve a future motion) or this Court (which may issue future orders to show cause or set future hearing dates in this case).

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2979123 CASE NUMBER: CASE TITLE:  YU XIANG WANG VS QI [IMAGED]  37-2019-00019348-CU-BC-NC Ultimately, when a client loses his or her attorney in a matter that an attorney chose to take on, the Court is left with a party who is self-represented. As such, it is necessary that the Court – and the opposing party – be able to contact that party in order to send out notices of upcoming hearings, etc. The burden of confirming that address rests on counsel who chose to take on the case. While the reasons provided here for relieving counsel appear to be sufficient to grant relief (as Ms. Qi appears to no longer be able to pay her legal bills) proper notice to the client and adequate attempts at confirmation of the client's address (or proper statement as to the efforts made to do so) is/are required before the requested relief can be granted. To that end, the Court continues the hearing on the present matter to provide Counsel additional time to take whatever best efforts they can to ensure that Ms. Qi has notice of the upcoming hearing date (including personal service of the moving papers and of a notice of the continued hearing date if such can be achieved) and including additional efforts to confirm (and provide to the Court) the contact information of the Client including: --searching the White Pages or Yellow Pages for contact information of the Clients --contacting friends or family of Ms. Qi (and identifying the specific individuals contacted by relationship (such as mother, grandfather, niece, co-worker, neighbor, etc.) --attempting to reach Ms. Qi, or friends and/or family of Ms. Qi, via social media (Facebook, Instagram, etc.) --hiring an attorney service to perform a skip-trace search to locate Ms. Qi.

While the Court is not expressly ordering Counsel to utilize any one of these methods in particular, before granting relief the Court expects much more robust effort to confirm an adequate address for Ms.

Qi as well as to notify Ms. Qi of the upcoming hearing date.

Unless the ruling(s) above indicate that an appearance is necessary, parties who wish to submit, who are satisfied with the above tentative ruling(s), and/or who do not otherwise wish to argue the motion(s) are encouraged to give notice to the Court and each other of their intention not to appear.

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