Superior Court of California 

County of Los Angeles – West District  

Beverly Hills Courthouse / Department 205 

 

 

BACKGROUND 

 

This case arises from a landlord-tenant dispute.  On or about December 14, 2020, Plaintiffs Ron Dardashti, Ryan Nober and Samuel Vizvary entered into a written Residential Lease Agreement with Defendant Howard Management Group for Unit 101 at 11923 Gorham Ave, Los Angeles CA 90049 (the Property”).  Plaintiffs allege Defendants Howard Management Group, Balboa West LLC, Michael Boren, Investment Management Company, Jorge Leal, Janely Leal, Joe Herrera, 11923 Gorham Ave LLC, Positive Investments Inc., and Rao Yalamanchili, owned, operated, managed, and/or were responsible for maintaining the Property. Plaintiffs allege there was mold infestation and other uninhabitable conditions in their unit.  The Complaint claims Defendants, directly, or through their agents, observed and were aware of these uninhabitable conditions because they received multiple government notices informing them of the violations and/or they received complaints from the tenants of the Property including Plaintiffs.  Plaintiffs further allege Defendants deliberately and intentionally failed and refused to take the necessary measures to correct the uninhabitable conditions at the Property.   

On September 17, 2024, this Court set a case management conference.  Plaintiffs failed to file a case management statement.  Plaintiffs claim the failure to do so was due to a calendaring error resulting from a high turnover of calendar and support staff in Plaintiffs’ counsel’s firm.  The Court then set an Order to Show Cause (“OSC”) Re: Sanctions for Failure to File a Case Management Statement and continued the Case Management Conference to November 19, 2024.  Plaintiffs filed a case management statement and a declaration re OSC on November 15, 2024.  Plaintiffs appeared at the case management conference on November 19, 2024.  The Court had not received Plaintiffs’ November 15 filings and accordingly, dismissed the action without prejudice.   

          This hearing is on Plaintiffs’ motion to vacate dismissal.  Plaintiffs argue that the dismissal resulted from the failure of the Court’s docket system to reflect Plaintiffs’ November 15 filings by the time of the November 19, 2024 conference.  There was no opposition filed as of the posting of this tentative ruling.      

LEGAL STANDARD 

Pursuant to Code Civ. Proc. §473(b), both discretionary and mandatory relief are available to parties when a case is dismissed.  Discretionary relief is available under the statute as “the court may, upon any terms as may be just, relieve a party or his or her legal representative from judgment, dismissal, order, or other proceeding taken against him or her through his or her mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or excusable neglect.”  (Code of Civ. Proc. § 473(b).)  

Alternatively, mandatory relief is available when “accompanied by an attorney’s sworn affidavit attesting to his or her mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or neglect.”  (Id.)  The purpose of the attorney affidavit provision is to “relieve the innocent client of the burden of the attorney’s fault, to impose the burden on the erring attorney, and to avoid precipitating more litigation in the form of malpractice suits.”  (Hu v. Fang (2002) 104 Cal.App.4th 61, 64.)  Mandatory relief is available even if counsel’s neglect was inexcusable.  (SJP Limited Partnership v. City of Los Angeles (2006) 136 Cal.App.4th 511, 516–517.)   

An application for discretionary or mandatory relief must be made no more than six months after entry of the judgment, dismissal, order, or other proceeding from which relief is sought.  (Code Civ. Proc., § 473(b); English v. IKON Business Solutions (2001) 94 Cal.App.4th 130, 143.) 

“[W]hen relief under section 473¿is¿available, there is a strong¿public¿policy¿in¿favor¿of granting relief and allowing the requesting party his or her day in court[.]” (Rappleyea v. Campbell¿(1994) 8 Cal. 4th 975, 981-82.)  Any doubt in applying section 473, subdivision (b), must be resolved in favor of the party seeking relief.  (Bonzer v. City of Huntington Park (1993) 20 Cal. App. 4th 1474,¿1477-1478.)  

Where relief is promptly sought and no prejudice would be done to the opposing party, only very slight evidence is required to justify the setting¿aside of a default.  For this reason, orders denying relief under section 473 are carefully scrutinized on appeal. (¿Rappleyea v. Campbell¿(1994) 8 Cal..4th 975, 980;¿Elston v. City of Turlock¿(1985) 38 Cal.3d 227, 233.) 

DISCUSSION 

The mandatory relief provision of §473(b) refers to both “default judgment or dismissal”.  The inclusion of “dismissal” by the Legislature was intended to “put plaintiffs whose cases are dismissed for failing to respond to a dismissal motion on the same footing with defendants who are defaulted for failing to respond to an action.”  (Jackson v. Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, Inc. (2019) 32 Cal.App.5th 166, 175.).   

However, although the language of the mandatory provision, on its face, affords relief from unspecified ‘dismissals’ caused by attorney neglect, “our courts have, through judicial construction, prevented it from being used indiscriminately by plaintiffs’ attorneys as a ‘perfect escape hatch’ to undo dismissals of civil cases.”  (Nacimiento Regional Water Management Advisory Committee v. Monterey County Water Resources Agency (2004) 122 Cal.App.4th 961, 967.)   

Courts have construed the provision as reaching only dismissals that are “procedurally equivalent to a default.”  (Jackson, 32 Cal.App.4th at 174.)  Dismissals that are sufficiently distinct from a default, thereby falling outside the scope of the mandatory provision, include “dismissals for failure to prosecute, dismissals for failure to serve a complaint within three years, dismissals based on running of the statute of limitations and voluntary dismissals entered pursuant to settlement.” (Leader v. Health Industries of America Inc. (2001) 89 Cal.App.4th 603, 620.)   

Here, the dismissal was not due to any of the items listed above.  Plaintiffs’ counsel represents he filed a case management statement and a declaration in response to the OSC hearing on November 15, 2024.  These documents were not reflected on the Court’s docket system at the November 19, 2024 conference, resulting in the dismissal of the case without prejudice.  Accordingly, the Court grants the motion to vacate dismissal. 

CONCLUSION 

Based on the foregoing, the Court GRANTS Plaintiffs’ motion to vacate dismissal.  The action is reinstated.  The Court sets a case management conference for February 20, 2025 at 8:30 a.m.   

 

IT IS SO ORDERED. 

 

DATED: January 9, 2025 ___________________________ 

Edward B. Moreton, Jr. 

Judge of the Superior Court