Judge Daniel M. Crowley, Case Number: 20STCV24190, Date: 2025-01-27 Tentative Ruling

All parties are urged to meet and confer with all parties concerning this tentative ruling to see if they can reach an agreed-upon resolution of their matter.  If you are able to reach an agreement, please notify the courtroom staff in advance of the hearing if you wish to submit on the tentative ruling rather than argue the motion by notifying the court by e-mailing the court at: SMCDEPT71@lacourt.org. Do not click on the email address, either copy and paste it or type it into your email. Include the word "SUBMITS" in all caps and the Case Number in the Subject line. In the body of the email, please provide the date and time of the hearing, your name, your contact information, the party you represent, and whether that party is a plaintiff, defendant, cross-complainant, cross-defendant, claimant, intervenor, or non-party, etc.

            Please be advised that if you submit on the tentative and elect not to appear at the hearing, the opposing party may still appear at the hearing and argue the matter, and the court could change its tentative based upon the argument.  Unless you receive a submission from all other parties in the matter, you should assume that others might appear at the hearing to argue. If you submit, but still intend to appear, include the words "SUBMITS, BUT WILL APPEAR" in the Subject line.

            If you elect to argue your matter, you are urged to do so remotely, via Court-Connect. If the moving party fails to appear and/or submit to the Court’s tentative ruling, the Court will take the matter off calendar.

            Note that once the Court has issued a tentative, the Court has the inherent authority not to allow the withdrawal of a motion and to adopt the tentative ruling as the order of the court.

If you submitted a courtesy copy of your papers containing media (such as a DVD or thumb drive), unless you request the return of the media in your papers, the court will destroy it following the hearing of your matter.

Defendants Jisuk Kim’s and Chris J. Lee’s motion for an order staying all proceedings pending resolution of their appeal of this Court’s judgment entered on August 21, 2024, is denied.

Defendants Jisuk Kim (“Jisuk”) and Chris J. Lee (“Lee”) (collectively, “Defendants”) move for an order staying all proceedings pending the resolution of their appeal of this Court’s judgment entered on August 21, 2024. (Notice Motion, pg. 2; C.C.P. §916(a).)

On June 3, 2024, through June 7, 2024, this Court presided over a bench trial on the bifurcated issue of Plaintiff Eok Jin Kim’s (“Eok Jin”) (“Plaintiff”) Second Cause of Action for Quiet Title and Defendant Jisuk’s First Cause of Action for Quiet Title, resulting in this Court’s “Judgment Cancelling Deeds,” which was entered on August 21, 2024. Subsequently, the court invited briefing on the issue of whether the “Judgment Cancelling Deed” was an interlocutory order or final, appealable judgment, and on October 7, 2024, the trial court issued its minute order finding that the “Judgment remains as entered,” and set this matter for Jury Trial on the remaining claims on February 24, 2025.

On October 8, 2024, Jisuk filed his Notice of Appeal with regard to the Judgment entered on August 21, 2024.

Defendants filed the instant motion on October 21, 2024. Plaintiff filed her opposition on October 31, 2024. Defendants filed their reply on January 15, 2025.

Courts have broad discretion to stay cases in the interest of efficiency and justice. Every court has the “inherent power, in its discretion, to stay proceedings when such a stay will accommodate the ends of justice.” (See St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Company v. AmerisourceBergen Corp. (2022) 80 Cal.App.5th 1, 6-7.) The Code of Civil Procedure further empowers every court to “provide for the orderly conduct of proceedings before it.” (C.C.P. §128(a)(3); see C.C.P. §187 [conferring on courts and judicial officers “all the means necessary” to carry out their jurisdiction].)

The perfecting of an appeal shall not stay enforcement of the judgment or order in the trial court if the judgment or order appealed from directs the sale, conveyance or delivery of possession of real property which is in the possession or control of the appellant or the party ordered to sell, convey or deliver possession of the property, unless an undertaking in a sum fixed by the trial court is given that the appellant or party ordered to sell, convey or deliver possession of the property will not commit or suffer to be committed any waste thereon and that if the judgment or order appealed from is affirmed, or the appeal is withdrawn or dismissed, the appellant shall pay the damage suffered by the waste and the value of the use and occupancy of the property, or the part of it as to which the judgment or order is affirmed, from the time of the taking of the appeal until the delivery of the possession of the property. If the judgment or order directs the sale of mortgaged real property and the payment of any deficiency, the undertaking shall also provide for the payment of any deficiency.

Here, a stay is not warranted because the judgment at issue “directs” “the conveyance” of “real property which is in the possession or control of the appellant.” Further, C.C.P. §917.4 requires an undertaking in the event a stay is ordered. Defendants’ motion does not address the issue of an undertaking.

Accordingly, Defendants’ motion to stay this action pending the outcome of their appeal is denied.

Hon. Daniel M. Crowley

Judge of the Superior Court