Court Opinion

ID: 9955672
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-03-28 22:03:00.757488+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:15:14.683029
License: Public Domain

Filed 3/28/24 Zeng v. Wang CA1/5
                NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS
California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not
certified for publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion has not been
certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.

        IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

                                 FIRST APPELLATE DISTRICT

                                            DIVISION FIVE

    YING MAGGIE ZENG,
        Plaintiff,                                            A168238
    v.
                                                              (Sonoma County
    ALBERT HUAI-EN WANG,                                      Super. Ct. No.
        Defendant and Appellant,                              SFL089529)

    JOHANNA BETH KLEPPE,
          Respondent and Real Party in
    Interest.

        Pro per defendant Albert Huai-En Wang (Father) appeals from an
order denying his motion for sanctions against the respondent and real party
in interest in this appeal, Johanna Kleppe, who is the attorney for the
plaintiff in the underlying divorce case, Ying Maggie Zeng (Mother). Father
contends the trial court erred by misapplying Code of Civil Procedure section
177.5.1 He further contends Kleppe committed criminal forgery, added
confidential documents to the record, failed to seal confidential records in this
court, and did not comply with her obligations under the Rules of

1     Unless indicated otherwise, all statutory references in this opinion are
to the Code of Civil Procedure.

                                                        1
Professional Conduct. We reject Father’s arguments and will affirm the
order.2
                 I. FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY
      Father and Mother were married in 2005 and have a minor child
(Daughter). The marriage was dissolved pursuant to a judgment entered in
2013 in Orange County Superior Court. In 2021, Mother moved for a change
of venue to Sonoma County, where she was living with Daughter.
      In its Findings and Orders after Hearing, the Orange County Superior
Court transferred the case to Sonoma County. The court further ordered
Kleppe to cause certain documents in the record to be sealed in Sonoma
County Superior Court after the record was transferred. Specifically, the
Orange County Superior Court ordered: “Attorney, Johanna Kleppe, shall
seal in Sonoma County and any other necessary county, State of California
Health and Welfare Agency Department of Social Services Investigation
Information, and accompanying documents attached as Exhibit L to
Petitioner’s July 2, 2021 Request for Order. Attorney Kleppe shall also seal
in Sonoma County and any other necessary county, Kaiser Permanente
Medical Records attached as Exhibit B to Petitioner’s July 2, 2021 Request
for Order.” The court’s Findings and Order did not give a deadline for
Kleppe’s compliance, but its minute order stated that she should “take care of
sealing the documents that were stated on the record as soon as the case gets
transferred to Sonoma County.”

2    Father has filed other appeals arising out of his family law issues with
Mother. We affirmed the trial court’s rulings in Case Nos. A165473 and
A166681. We dismissed Case No. A168859 as an appeal from a non-
appealable order.

                                      2
      Pending completion of the transfer of the case to Sonoma County,
Mother filed a separate proceeding against Father in Sonoma County
Superior Court for a domestic violence restraining order (DVRO) under the
Domestic Violence Prevention Act (Fam. Code, § 6200 et seq.; DVPA). The
trial court issued a temporary restraining order against Father on October
26, 2021, and, after a hearing on March 4, 2022, issued the DVRO and
custody and visitation orders.
      On October 21, 2022—roughly 10 months after the transfer to Sonoma
County was complete—the Sonoma County trial court entered an “Order to
Seal Records Pursuant to Cal. Rules of Court, rule 2.551.” The order sealed
records identified in the Orange County order and was “made pursuant to an
order by Judge Thomas McConville, Judge of the Superior Court of Orange
County.” The order was served on Father by mail that same day.
      Ten days later on October 31, 2022, Father filed a request for an order
for “[m]onetary sanction[s] under [section] 177.5” against Kleppe and for
“[c]ompliance with Judge Thomas McConville’s Court order by sealing
Confidential Records in Orange County Superior Court and Sonoma County
Superior Court.” In his attached declaration, Father asserted that Kleppe
had not made good faith efforts to comply with the Orange County order, she
did nothing about it until Father filed a FL-300 Request for Order on July 25,
2022, in her proposed order she only asked the court to seal two exhibits, she
lacked good cause or substantial justification for not promptly filing a motion
to seal the records, she filed additional confidential records without sealing
them, and he emailed Kleppe on October 23, 2022, claiming there were still
confidential records in public court files that could be accessed through the
superior court websites.

                                       3
        Kleppe filed a responsive declaration on November 29, 2022, explaining
her delay in complying with the Orange County order. Essentially, she
claimed that she was busy preparing and filing the DVPA action, responding
to Father’s voluminous court filings, and attending hearings. She further
asserted that on October 10, 2022, she sought and obtained the October 21,
2022 order from the trial court to seal the subject documents, and the order
was filed in both the Orange County and Sonoma County proceedings. She
also described her attempt to resolve the matter with Father in November
2022.
        In December 2022, after a hearing, the trial court denied Father’s
motion. In relevant part, the minute order states: “Court DENIES father’s
request for sanctions against Counsel Kleppe. [¶] Court does not find
Counsel Kleppe’s behavior to be willful or malicious.” Father filed a timely
notice of appeal.
                                II. DISCUSSION
        A. Section 177.5
        Section 177.5 provides: “A judicial officer shall have the power to
impose reasonable money sanctions, not to exceed fifteen hundred dollars
($1,500), notwithstanding any other provision of law, payable to the court, for
any violation of a lawful court order by a person, done without good cause or
substantial justification. This power shall not apply to advocacy of counsel
before the court. For the purposes of this section, the term ‘person’ includes a
witness, a party, a party’s attorney, or both. [¶] Sanctions pursuant to this
section shall not be imposed except on notice contained in a party’s moving or
responding papers; or on the court’s own motion, after notice and opportunity
to be heard. An order imposing sanctions shall be in writing and shall recite
in detail the conduct or circumstances justifying the order.”

                                         4
      Father contends the trial court erred because it denied his sanctions
motion on the ground that Kleppe’s conduct was not willful or malicious. He
also claims that the court, at the hearing on his motion, referred to a minute
order from a December 8, 2022 hearing in Case No. SFL-089930 (dismissing
contempt proceedings against Kleppe), in which the court noted that Father
had admitted he had no evidence that the failure to seal the records for 12
months caused harm to Daughter. Father contends the court acted
improperly in denying his request for monetary sanctions, because the
question under section 177.5 is not Kleppe’s intent or whether she caused
harm, but whether she acted “without good cause or substantial
justification.” (§ 177.5.)3
      Father misconstrues section 177.5 and the trial court’s order. Section
177.5 gives the court “the power” to impose monetary sanctions if a court
order was violated “without good cause or substantial justification.” (§ 177.5,
italics added.) Accordingly, even when the statutory requisites for imposing
sanctions (a lack of good cause and substantial justification) are met, the
court still has discretion to decide whether sanctions should be imposed.
Here, the court’s ruling can reasonably be read to mean that, whether or not
Kleppe violated the Orange County order without good cause or substantial
justification, the court was not going to exercise its discretion to impose
sanctions against her, because Kleppe’s delay in obtaining the sealing was
not willful or malicious. The court’s consideration of these circumstances in

3     Kleppe contends she complied with the Orange County order by
(eventually) arranging for the subject documents to be sealed, and the trial
court did not explicitly rule otherwise. Therefore, she argues, there was no
“violation” of a court order on which to base a sanctions order. (§ 177.5.) We
need not decide whether she violated the order to resolve the appeal.
                                        5
deciding whether to exercise its discretion was reasonable, and the denial of
the motion was not an abuse of discretion.
      Father argues that we should reverse the order based on In re Marriage
of Anka and Yeager (2019) 31 Cal.App.5th 1115 (Anka) and In re Woodham
(2001) 95 Cal.App.4th 438 (Woodham). Anka is inapposite because it was
decided under Family Code section 3111 (Anka, at pp. 1118–1120), and
Father’s motion in the trial court did not rely on that statute. (See Mendoza
v. Trans Valley Transport (2022) 75 Cal.App.5th 748, 769–770.)
Furthermore, nothing in Anka or Woodham, which both found that the
imposition of sanctions was within the trial court’s discretion in the
circumstances of those cases, compels the conclusion that the court’s ruling
here was an abuse of discretion. (See also Jameson v. Desta (2018) 5 Cal.5th
594, 608–609 [absence of reporter’s transcript frequently fatal to appeal
because the trial court judgment is ordinarily presumed to be correct].)
      B. Criminal Forgery
      Father contends Kleppe “forged” the Sonoma County trial court’s
sealing order of October 21, 2022, and submitted this “falsified” order to the
Orange County Superior Court and Sonoma County Superior Court in
November 2022 to seal more documents than the October 21 order had
required. Specifically, he contends the real October 21 order, which both
identifies the documents to be sealed and states that the “records to be sealed
are attached as ATTACHMENT 1,” lists only two exhibits to be sealed. An
allegedly “fake” order, accompanying Kleppe’s Declaration in Support of
Order to Seal Documents dated November 28, 2022, in the Orange County
Superior Court, lists three exhibits to be sealed in Attachment 1, including an
Exhibit Q (medical records). Another allegedly “fake” order, accompanying
Kleppe’s Declaration in Support of Order to Seal Documents dated November

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28, 2022, in Sonoma County Superior Court, lists 10 exhibits in Attachment
1. Father claims that Kleppe thereby “engaged in the crime of forgery under
Penal Code Sections 132, 134 and 470.”
      Father’s argument does not compel reversal of the order from which he
appeals. First, he does not provide a record citation confirming when he
brought this discrepancy to the trial court’s attention in connection with his
section 177.5 motion. Our review of the record indicates that he first raised
his criminal forgery argument in his reply declaration, after Kleppe provided
copies of the November 2022 declarations in which she purported to attach
the October 21, 2022 order. Redress for criminal forgery, therefore, was not
part of what Father sought in his Request for Order. Second, we have
examined the pages in the record to which Father cites, and while he claims
that the “real court order” of October 21, 2022, identifies only two exhibits to
be sealed, the record does not contain an Attachment 1 to the October 21
order or conclusively show whether there was one. Finally, Kleppe’s conduct
in presenting the October 21 order to obtain or suggest the sealing of records
in addition to those stated in the Orange County order is not immediately
germane to whether she should have been sanctioned for failing to comply
with the Orange County order. For these reasons, Father has not established
that the court erred in declining to impose sanctions based on the matters he
raised in his October 31, 2022 Request for Order.
      That said, it is concerning that Kleppe’s declarations each purport to
attach the same October 21 order but with a different Attachment 1. Kleppe
provides no explanation for the discrepancy in her respondent’s brief. While
it is not clear from the record what occurred or what Kleppe intended, an
attorney may not obtain an order sealing certain documents, swap out the
attachment to the order, and pass it off as an order sealing other documents.

                                        7
This is so even if the additional documents to be sealed are identical or
similar to the documents that have been already sealed. Furthermore, any
sealing order (or amendment) must be sought and issued in compliance with
rule 2.551 of the California Rules of Court. Father appears to have alerted
Kleppe to at least some of these issues during their meet and confer, which
exacerbates our concerns.
      Because of the potential seriousness of this matter, because it arose
after Father filed his October 31, 2022 Request for Order, and because the
trial court may not have had a meaningful opportunity to examine it, our
affirmance of the December 2022 order does not preclude the court from
considering, on its own motion after the remittitur (1) whether Kleppe
accurately represented the October 21, 2022 order in her declarations and (2)
whether all the documents that should be sealed in the trial court have, in
fact, been ordered sealed. And we strongly suggest that the court do so.4
      C. Additional Confidential Documents in the Trial Court
      Father next points out that an order issued on January 18, 2023, sealed
confidential documents in five court filings in the trial court. He argues that
this shows Kleppe had improperly put into the record additional confidential
documents that had to be sealed.
      Father’s argument again misses the mark. To the extent he did not
raise this matter with the trial court in connection with his October 2022
request for sanctions and compliance, it provides no basis for reversing the
order from which he appeals. To the extent he did present the matter to the
court, the court’s decision not to sanction Kleppe was well within its

4     In any event, our decision today does not preclude Father from raising
these two issues with the trial court again.
                                       8
discretion for the reasons explained above. Furthermore, the documents are
now sealed, rendering Kleppe’s alleged failure to seal them moot.
      D. Confidential Documents in the Appellate Record
      Father contends Kleppe failed to seal confidential records in this court.
He does not show that he made that argument in the trial court, so it is
irrelevant to this appeal. We also note that portions of the record have been
sealed in this appeal and Father’s other appeals (Case Nos. A165473 and
A166681). He fails to establish error.
      E. Duty of Candor to the Tribunal
      Father argues that Kleppe did not comply with rule 3.3 of the Rules of
Professional Conduct when she filed Mother’s request for a DVRO and trial
brief in the DVPA case. He does not show that he made the argument to the
trial court when requesting sanctions and compliance with the Orange
County order. Nor does he show that the argument is relevant to the merits
of that request. He fails to establish error.
                              III. DISPOSITION
      The order is affirmed. Our affirmance of the order does not, however,
preclude the trial court from considering after the remittitur (1) whether
Kleppe accurately represented the October 21, 2022 order in her declarations
and (2) whether all the documents that should be sealed in the trial court
have, in fact, been ordered sealed. In the interests of justice, both parties
shall bear their own costs on appeal. (Cal. Rules of Court, rule 8.278(a)(5).)

                                         9
                              CHOU, J.

We concur.

JACKSON, P. J.

BURNS, J.

Zeng v. Wang / A168238

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