Judge: Maurice A. Leiter, Case: 23STCV11963, Date: 2024-08-08 Tentative Ruling

Case Number: 23STCV11963    Hearing Date: August 8, 2024    Dept: 54

Hearing Date: August 8, 2024

Department 54, Judge Maurice Leiter

Defendant International House of Music, Inc.’s Motion to Set Aside and Vacate Default and Default Judgment

Moving Parties:

Defendant International House of Music, Inc.

Responding Party:

Plaintiff Luis Licea

T/R:     The motion is granted.

Defendant to give notice.

If the parties wish to submit on the tentative, please email the courtroom at¿SMCdept54@lacourt.org¿with notice to opposing counsel (or self-represented party) before 8:00 am on the day of the hearing. 

            The Court considers the moving papers, oppositions and replies.

BACKGROUND

            Plaintiff Luis Licea, a blind individual, filed this disability-access “tester” suit against defendant International House of Music, Inc. on May 26, 2023. Plaintiff alleges Defendant operates a commercial website that is not compatible with the screen-reading technology Plaintiff and other blind individuals use to access the Internet.

            On July 27, 2023, the clerk entered Defendant’s default. On April 11, 2024, the Court entered default judgment for Plaintiff.

            On May 9, 2024, Defendant moved to set aside and vacate the default and default judgment.

EVIDENTIARY RULINGS

Plaintiff objects to paragraph 11 and Exhibit G of the Declaration of Catherine Corfee. The objection is sustained.

ANALYSIS

“The court may, upon any terms as may be just, relieve a party or his or her legal representative from a judgment, dismissal, order, or other proceeding taken against him or her through his or her mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or excusable neglect. Application for this relief . . . shall be made within a reasonable time, in no case exceeding six months, after the judgment, dismissal, order, or proceeding was taken.” (Code Civ. Proc., § 473(b).)

Defendant is not entirely clear about what ground he relies on for relief. The papers suggest several times that the default or default judgment might have been caused by the mistake of counsel. But it is unclear how counsel’s failure to appear for a single hearing in April 2024 could have caused the default entered in July 2023, before she was retained. Also, counsel does not attest to mistake so much as she accuses her opposing counsel of bad-faith disregard for her unavailability. If Defendant means to rely on the mistake of counsel, it has not been shown.

But Defendant has demonstrated it failed to act out of mistake, inadvertence, or excusable neglect. Defendant’s principal attests that he “mistakenly believed that the [instant] lawsuit ... was similar to a scam [he] previously experienced in 2021”, and it was not until January 2024 that his (prior) counsel “inform[ed] [him] of the seriousness of the action against [him] ... .” (Naranjo Decl., ¶¶ 9-10.) When Plaintiff discovered the “seriousness”, he immediately retained counsel and sought to set aside the default. (Id., ¶ 11.)

The law favors disposition of disputes on the merits. (See Rappleyea v. Campbell¿(1994) 8 Cal. 4th 975, 981-82.) And Mr. Naranjo’s declaration demonstrates good-faith confusion about the state of the lawsuit, who was representing him, and to what extent. (See e.g., Naranjo Decl., ¶ 11 [“I received a phone call from my lawyer at the [sic] Gonzalez ... providing me with the name of my defense counsel”].) Without clear guidance, Defendant may reasonably have assumed this suit was not to be taken seriously based on its similarity to a prior, near-identical lawsuit against it. (See id., ¶ 9.)

The Court does not address here Defendant’s arguments that Plaintiff lacks standing to sue, or that Defendant made best efforts to correct accessibility problems on its website.