Metropolitan News-Enterprise

 

Monday, September 26, 2022

 

Page 1

 

C.A. Rebuffs Claim That Court Improperly Excused Lawyers’ Gaffe As Clerical Error

 

By a MetNews Staff Writer

 

The Third District Court of Appeal has held that where an error was made by a law firm in filing for a renewal of a judgment in its favor by designating a woman as the judgment debtor without specifying that she was not personally obligated to the firm but was merely the administrator of the estate that owed the money, a correction to the renewal could be made years later as a “clerical error.”

When the estate of Texas-born real estate entrepreneur Billy Joe Douglas was settled on Dec. 17, 2008, it was ordered by the San Joaquin Superior Court that the Stockton law firm of Neumiller & Beardslee be paid 127,158.39 in fees and costs in connection with its services to the estate. It wasn’t paid.

A judgment may be renewed, on motion, within the initial 10-year enforcement period, and on July 31, 2015, the law firm filed an “application for and renewal of judgment.” However, it designated the decedent’s daughter Audrey Douglas as the party owing the money, rather than identifying her as the estate’s administrator.

On the same day the request was filed, the court clerk issued a notice of renewal of the judgment. Five years later, the law firm realized it had made an error, and on Aug. 14, 2020, it moved for an order correcting its application for the order renewing the judgment and the renewal.

Both Audrey Douglas and another daughter of the decedent, Joanna Douglas-Dorsey, a beneficiary of the estate, opposed the motion. Judge Elizabeth Humphreys granted it and Douglas-Dorsey appealed.

In an opinion filed Wednesday but not publicly posted until Thursday, Acting Presiding Justice Ronald B. Robie recited that “Appellant contends the trial court erred in granting the motion to correct the clerical error,” which may be corrected at any time, “because this was an error made by counsel, not the court.”

However, Robie did not concern himself with Humphreys’s purported correction of Neumiller & Beardslee’s flawed application, nor with the clerk’s notice of renewal of the judgment, but looked at the status of the 2008 judgment.

He wrote that “the error here is a clerical error not a judicial error,” a challenge to which would be untimely. The jurist explained:

“The original judgment identifies the judgment debtor as Audrey Douglas, in her capacity as administrator. Respondent did not apply to the court via motion or application to change or alter that judgment in any way. Instead, respondent applied to the clerk to renew that existing judgment using the Judicial Council form and failed to include the capacity of the judgment debtor.”

He continued:

“The clerk’s entry of the renewal based on that application was ministerial, not judicial…, and created no new or separate judgment, but merely extended the time in which the original judgment could be enforced….As such, there was no exercise of judicial discretion, judicial reasoning, or judicial determination connected to this application. The trial court did not abuse its discretion in determining this was a clerical error.”

The case is Estate of Douglas, C093301

 

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