Thursday, April 16, 2026
Page 4
Court of Appeal:
Pro Per Must Pay $10,000 in Sanctions for Persistent Frivolity
Opinion Says Case Involves Relentless Litigant With ‘Disturbing Lack of Candor’
By Kimber Cooley, associate editor
Div. Four of the First District Court of Appeal has imposed a $10,000 sanction on a self-represented party who the panel describes as a “persistent litigant” who engages in “tossing] around ad hominem attacks on…everyone who disagrees with him” and pursued frivolous arguments that bore “Alice in Wonderland” qualities in mounting collateral attacks on final judgments and making other objectively baseless claims.
Justice Jon B. Streeter authored Tuesday’s opinion, imposing the penalty on cross-complainant Afshin Zand, in addition to awarding the other party attorney fees for responding to the baseless challenges, and declaring:
“We now come to the central flaw in Zand’s approach to this appeal, a flaw that would cross a red line for any litigant appearing before us, represented or pro se….Underlying virtually everything Zand says in support of his appeal is the theory that, by labelling any order entered against him as void, he has…license to continue to relitigate past, adverse decisions against him, ad nauseum. This idea of voidness is wildly incorrect. If Zand’s conception of voidness were right, litigation would be never-ending. His misuse of the doctrine of voidness as an all-purpose excuse to disregard basic principles of finality renders his appeal frivolous.”
Streeter acknowledged jurisprudence frowning on imposing sanctions on self-represented parties solely on the ground that the appeal lacked merit but opined:
“Zand has shown himself to be ‘a persistent litigant’…who has been engaged in a campaign of harassment and delay designed to impede [the plaintiff’s] ability to obtain relief in this action and retaliate against him for bringing suit….Because every position Zand has taken is pure ‘sophistry’ and ‘[goes] beyond proper advocacy and common sense’…, we deem the entire appeal to be an ‘utterly futile gesture[] that [has] unnecessarily wasted the time and resources of respondent[] and this court.’ ”
Presiding Justice Tracie L. Brown and Justice Jeremy M. Goldman joined in the opinion.
Contract Dispute
The sanctions arose after years of litigation in a breach of contract dispute between Ponani Sukumar and Zand. On June 15, 2020, Sukumar filed a complaint against Zand, asserting that he paid the defendant more than $10,000 for engineering consulting services in 2019 related to the development of a product to mitigate electromagnetic emissions purportedly released by residential solar panel systems.
Claiming that the defendant never turned over any work product or time sheets describing his purported efforts, Sukumar asserted that he breached an oral promise and unjustly enriched himself.
After Zand responded by filing a cross-complaint against Sukumar, Alameda Superior Court Judge Dennis Hayashi granted Sukumar’s motion to specially strike the cross-pleading under California’s anti-SLAPP statute, found at Code of Civil Procedure §425.16, and awarded the prevailing cross-defendant $5,500 in attorney fees as required by the statutory scheme in 2021.
In July 2022, then-Alameda Superior Court Judge Julia Spain (now retired) imposed terminating sanctions against Zand after multiple monetary penalties for frivolous arguments about standing went unpaid. Judgment was entered against him for over $50,000.
Zand appealed the anti-SLAPP ruling and accompanying fee order, arguing, among other things, that “Sukumar’s underlying complaint…contained falsehoods.”
In 2024, the same panel found the appeal to be meritless, affirmed Hayashi’s order, and awarded fees for work done on the appeal in an amount to be set by the trial court.
After Spain ordered Zand to pay $41,580 in fees, Zand appealed again, arguing that Hayashi did not grant the anti-SLAPP motion, citing a discrepancy between the date the decree was signed and a stamp indicating that it was not filed until months later as well as two orders cryptically providing only that unspecified “Ex Parte relief is denied,” rendering all fee orders and the earlier appellate decision “void.”
Theory of Skullduggery
Saying that “rather than indulge Zand’s theory of skullduggery and deceit, we think the best reading of the record is simple and straightforward,” Streeter remarked:
“[T]he order signed by Judge Hayashi on February 23, 2021 was filed by the court clerk on April 23, 2021 and served by Sukumar on April 30, 2021. The ex parte activity Zand relies upon to tell a different story shows nothing more than some administrative delay in the filing of the order, apparently complicated by a bit of confusion over who was responsible to serve the order once it was filed.”
Commenting that “Zand seems to think that the lack of clarity in the record concerning why it took until April 23, 2021 for the order granting the anti-SLAPP motion to be filed gives him a magic-bullet legal argument that will change everything,” the jurist pointed out that “we summarily disposed of this and several other wholly unsupportable arguments” in the earlier appeal.
After rejecting the litigant’s other claims as having been resolved in the 2024 opinion or as raising non-appealable issues, he declared that “[w]e are satisfied that Judge Spain exercised her discretion appropriately on this record” and awarded appellate fees in an amount “to be determined by the trial court on remand.”
Misguided Voidness Arguments
Noting that the appropriateness of the sanctions turns on whether the appeal was prosecuted for an improper motive or was pursued when any reasonable attorney would agree that it is meritless, Streeter wrote:
“Misguided voidness arguments are not unusual coming from pro se litigants who persistently refuse to accept the finality of adverse judgments against them….Certainly, many litigants, whether represented or not, can easily miss the nuances of the doctrine of voidness (which is sometimes challenging to apply even for lawyers and judges); and certainly, many pro se litigants, due to a combination of lack of legal training and lack of perspective, may be unable to resist making arguments they genuinely believe permit endless relitigation of past losses….But that is no excuse. Although the reasons Zand decided to pursue his voidness theory may be understandable, none of them justifies its frivolousness.”
He continued:
“Add to that Zand’s tendency to use invective in an apparent attempt to inflict reputational damage on his adversary and opposing counsel by spreading accusations of criminal conduct on the public record, a tactic he has used liberally in all of his appellate briefs, and we find that this appeal has been pursued for improper motives—to bring about delay and drag this case out for as long as possible, to burden Sukumar with unnecessary costs in retaliation for suing him, and to impugn the integrity not just of Sukumar but of anyone who he perceives has failed to recognize the righteousness of his cause.”
Not Imposed Lightly
Saying that “[w]e do not impose appellate sanctions lightly,” the jurist said:
“We are dealing here with a litigant who has shown a disturbing lack of candor. As noted above, Zand claims that Judge Hayashi in fact denied Sukumar’s anti-SLAPP motion, rather than granting it. This argument rests on an objectively false reading of the record….Zand makes things worse, doubling down with vague speculation about illicit conduct involving court staff to explain his theory of an order that purportedly does not exist. No reasonable attorney would present pertinent ‘facts’ to us in this deceptive fashion—contrary to what we can plainly see— much less hope to escape consequences for doing so.”
He concluded:
“In this case, we will direct payment of $10,000 to the clerk of this court. We believe that amount is justified not only by the high degree of ‘objective frivolousness’ shown by this appeal…and the indicia of bad faith, but also because the total amount of sanctions awarded must be high enough so that it has meaningful, deterrent bite….”
In a footnote, Streeter said that the court declined to declare Zand a vexatious litigant, as requested by Sukumar, but warned that “we would seriously consider the…question if he were to appear again in this court presenting similar arguments.”
The case is Zand v. Sukumar, 2026 S.O.S. 1034.
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