Finding of Wells

























Filed 12/12/12 Finding of Wells CA2/2

Subsequent opinion declaring litigant vexatious

>

>

>

>

>

>NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS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 This opinion has not been certified for
publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115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



SECOND
APPELLATE DISTRICT



DIVISION
TWO




>

In re FINDING of WILLIAM G. WELLS, as a Vexatious Litigant.

B235019 (Los Angeles County Super. Ct. No. BC313252)

William G.
Wells, in pro. per., for Plaintiff and Appellant William G. Wells.























___________________________________________________

>

On March 30, 2011, William G. Wells
(also known as W.G. Wells) was disbarred for href="http://www.mcmillanlaw.com/">misconduct occurring during his 10-year
vendetta against a former employee.
Among other wrongdoing, Wells violated the href="http://www.fearnotlaw.com/">doctrine of res judicata by relitigating
an issue that was determined against him.
During the State Bar Court
proceeding, Wells filed 144 unmeritorious motions and pleadings. Apart from the behavior that led to his
disbarment, Wells maintained at least five litigations that were determined
adversely to him in this appellate district.
Based on his repeated acts of misconduct, we declare William G. Wells to
be a vexatious litigant. (Code Civ.
Proc., § 391 et seq.)

Judicial Notice

On September 17, 2012, the Court sent Wells an Order to Show
Cause (OSC) why he should not be declared a vexatious litigant. Wells had the opportunity to respond in
writing and at oral argument. The OSC
indicates the Court’s intent to take judicial notice of (1) Wells’s State Bar
disciplinary records; (2) the Supreme Court disbarment order; and (3) appellate
cases in which Wells represented himself in propria persona. Judicial notice may be taken of the records
of any court of this state. (Evid. Code,
§ 452, subd. (d).) In a vexatious
litigant proceeding, the court considers evidence material to its
determination. (Code Civ. Proc., § 391.2; In re Kinney (2011) 201 Cal.App.4th 951, 954, fn. 3.) All of the judicially noticed matters are
relevant to the present proceeding.
(Evid. Code, § 459; In re Kinney,> supra, 201 Cal.App.4th at p. 954, fn. 3; Cal. Rules of Court, Rule 8.1115
(b).)

With regard to Wells’s State Bar
records, we have obtained certified copies of the notice of disciplinary
charges; the decision of the hearing judge filed October 27, 2009 (the
Decision); and the opinion and order of the State Bar Court Review Department
filed November 9, 2010 (State Bar Opn.).
(Case Nos. 98-O-03727, 02-O-14682.
See People v. Vigil (2008) 169
Cal.App.4th 8, 12, fn. 2 [taking judicial notice of State Bar records].) We also have a certified copy of the Supreme
Court order in In re William G. Wells on
Discipline (Mar. 30, 2011)> S188974. Wells objects to the State
Bar Court opinion, which he refers to as “a
summary of [] falsehoods, lies and fabrications.”

The State Bar functions as an arm
of the Supreme Court in attorney discipline matters. The administrative power it exercises is
“alternative and cumulative” to the Supreme Court’s authority to conduct
disciplinary hearings. (>Jacobs v. State Bar (1977) 20 Cal.3d
191, 196, 198; Chronicle Pub. >Co. v. Superior Court (1960) 54 Cal.2d 548, 563-564.) The State Bar makes recommendations to the
Supreme Court, which “retains its inherent judicial authority to disbar or
suspend attorneys.” (>Saleeby v. State Bar (1985) 39 Cal.3d
547, 557-558; In re Attorney Discipline
System (1998) 19 Cal.4th 582, 600; Bus. & Prof. Code, § 6078.)

The State Bar Proceedings

The State
Bar filed disciplinary charges against Wells after receiving a complaint

from his former employee Barbara Dailey. A 23-day trial was held over the course of a
year.href="#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title="">^[1] Wells was “evasive, hostile, and inconsistent
and implausible” and refused to answer questions “even after being ordered to
do so by the court.” (Decision, p.
2.) Wells was found culpable of
repeatedly lying under oath; misappropriating money; failing to release
Dailey’s legal files and render an accounting to her; and filing an unjust
action against her. The judge
recommended disbarment to protect the public, the courts and the legal
community. (Decision, pp. 17-19, 23.)

On de novo review, the State Bar
Court determined that Barbara Dailey owned commercial property in Corona. She acquired the property for a modest sum in
1976, as a retirement asset, at the urging of her employer, Mr. Wells, for whom
she had worked as a secretary since the early 1960’s. Wells acted as her attorney in the transaction
and managed the Corona property until 1998.
(State Bar Opn., p. 3.)

Dailey became embroiled in
litigation over the Corona property. In
1992, Wells sued a bank on Dailey’s behalf, claiming that she was “the sole
owner” of the Corona property and testifying that he “never” had an ownership
interest. Dailey was awarded $88,029 in
damages, but Wells never gave any portion of the award to Dailey. (State Bar Opn., pp. 5-7.) In 1995, Dailey was involved in litigation
with Riverside County over the substandard condition of the Corona
property: Wells filed a petition for
writ of administrative mandate on Dailey’s behalf, then failed to show up for
trial, obliging her to pay the County $19,475 in fees. Wells refused to relinquish the files in that
case to Dailey’s new attorney, even after the trial court ordered him to do
so. (Id.
at pp. 7-8.) In another dispute,
Dailey was obliged to pay a tenant $60,000 after Wells refused to release the
tenant’s security deposit from his trust account. (Id.
at pp. 4-5.)

During litigation in 1997, Wells
declared under penalty of perjury “I am not now nor have I ever been the owner
of the [Corona] property.” After Dailey
engaged a new attorney, Wells took the opposite tack in the same case and
claimed under penalty of perjury “Dailey did not purchase the Corona property,
I did . . . .” In 1999, the trial court
ruled that Dailey “is the 100% sole owner in fee simple of the [Corona]
property . . . and that William G. Wells . . . [has] no right, title, interest,
or estate, in the Corona Property.”
(State Bar Opn., pp. 8-9.)

After Dailey retained new counsel
to represent her in all matters involving the Corona property, she directed
Wells to deliver all of her files and documentation to the new attorney, and
demanded an accounting of all rents, profits, losses and expenses. Wells refused, asserting that he owned the
Corona property. This “contradicted
Wells’s prior statements under oath in various legal proceedings that Dailey
had purchased the Corona property, that she was the sole owner of the property
and that he had no ownership interest therein.”
(State Bar Opn., pp. 3-4, 5-6.)

Wells sued Dailey to quiet title,
alleging that he is “the sole owner in fee simple title to the [Corona]
property.” Once again, the trial court
ruled that Dailey is “the 100% sole owner in fee simple” and Wells has no
right, title or interest in it. This
lawsuit spawned four unmeritorious appeals from Wells. An opinion filed in March 2001 affirmed that
Dailey was the sole owner and Wells has no right, title or interest in the
property. (State Bar Opn., pp.
9-10.) Less than a month after the Court
of Appeal decision was filed, Wells brought a new lawsuit against Dailey,
challenging her ownership of the Corona property. This lawsuit was brought in the name of
Wells’s wife. The trial court sustained
Dailey’s demurrer under the doctrine of res judicata. Wells appealed the decision and lost. (State Bar Opn., p. 10.)

The State Bar Court found that
Wells repeatedly lied under oath about his ownership of the Corona property,
about property taxes, and about who was entitled to rents from the property,
all to secure an advantage. He
misappropriated monies while acting as Dailey’s attorney, refusing to release a
$60,000 security deposit or $88,029 in litigation funds, and he violated court
orders directing him to deliver Dailey’s files to her new attorney. He failed to render an appropriate account of
funds he held on her behalf. Wells
filed an unjust action against Dailey in his wife’s name after the Court of
Appeal determined that he had no right to the Corona property. (State Bar Opn., pp. 11-16.)

Wells forced Dailey “to defend
herself against his litigation vendetta”; he “displayed indifference toward
rectification for his misconduct by failing to acknowledge any wrongdoing or
refund any of the funds he misappropriated”; and he “displayed a lack of candor
and cooperation throughout these proceedings.”
(State Bar Opn., pp. 18-19.) The
court wrote, “Wells engaged in a ten-year vendetta against Dailey. He continues the same relentless tactics in
this court, filing 144 motions, almost all of which were denied as
unmeritorious.” His conduct “‘went
beyond tenacity to truculence,’” and amounted to an abuse of process. The court recommended disbarment. (Id. at
pp. 20-21.)

Wells
brought a petition for review in the Supreme Court. On March 30, 2011, the Supreme Court denied
Wells’s petition and disbarred him from the practice of law. The court ordered Wells to make restitution
to Dailey of $148,000, plus interest. (>In re William G. Wells on
Discipline, supra, S188974.)

Adverse Appellate Litigation

1. Wells
v. Ciotti (Feb. 3, 2006,
B179092) (nonpub. opn.)

Wells
appealed in propria persona from a postjudgment fee award. The parties’ lease agreement provided for an
award of fees and costs to the prevailing party, and defendant Richard Ciotti
prevailed at trial. Wells lost his
appeal: the trial court had jurisdiction
to impose a fee award against Wells, and the amount was reasonable.

2. Wells
v. Dailey (Oct. 3, 2006,
B178577) (nonpub. opn.)

Wells
appealed in propria persona from a judgment in favor of Barbara Dailey. This Court rejected Wells’s challenges to the
sufficiency of the evidence and to the denial of his motion for a new trial.

3. Wells
v. Ciotti (Order and Opn. re sanctions filed Nov. 15, 2006, B184691)

While
acting in propria persona, Wells
misrepresented to this Court the date that the trial court was served with a
statement of disqualification. We
chastised Wells and denied him attorney fees and costs on appeal due to his
misconduct . Wells filed a petition for
rehearing containing new false statements.
We issued an OSC re sanctions based on Wells’s petition for
rehearing. Reciting multiple examples of
dishonesty, we found Wells’s petition for rehearing frivolous, imposed
sanctions of $5,000 and reported him to the State Bar for making false
statements of fact to a court.

4. Wells v. City National Bank
(Dismissal Order filed Sep. 19, 2007, B200603)

Wells
appealed in propria persona from a superior court order entered on June 5,
2007, directing the payment of funds to Barbara Dailey. On August 16, 2007, the Court issued an OSC
directing Wells to show that the appeal was taken from an appealable
order. Wells failed to respond to the
OSC. His appeal was involuntarily
dismissed.

5. Wells v. Americantex, Inc. (Oct.
29, 2012, B235019) (nonpub. opn.)

Wells
appealed in propria persona from an order denying his postjudgment motion to
strike Richard Ciotti’s assignment of his judgment to a third party. This Court affirmed the trial court’s ruling
against Wells, noting that “Wells has pursued a pattern of dishonesty when he
appears in court.” (Id. at p. 5.)

DISCUSSION

“The purpose
of the vexatious litigant statutes ‘is to address the problem created by the
persistent and obsessive litigant who constantly has pending a number of
groundless actions and whose conduct causes serious financial results to the
unfortunate objects of his or her attacks and places an unreasonable burden on
the courts.’ (Morton v. Wagner (2007) 156 Cal.App.4th 963, 970-971; see >Shalant v. Girardi (2011) 51 Cal.4th
1164, 1169; Wolfgram v. Wells Fargo Bank (1997)
53 Cal.App.4th 43, 48; First Western Development
Corp. v. Superior Court (1989) 212 Cal.App.3d 860, 867-868.) ‘The constant suer . . . becomes a serious
problem to others than the defendant he dogs.
By clogging court calendars, he causes real detriment to those who have
legitimate controversies to be determined and to the taxpayers who must provide
the courts. Arguably, one who has
repeatedly relitigated groundless claims against one defendant could be
required to give security before pressing to trial an apparently unfounded
claim against a new victim.’ (>Taliaferro v. Hoogs (1965) 237
Cal.App.2d 73, 74; see Holcomb v. U.S.
Bank Nat. Assn. (2005) 129 Cal.App.4th 1494, 1505.)” (In re
Kinney, supra,> 201 Cal.App.4th at pp. 957-958.)

The vexatious litigant statutes do
not apply solely to the trial courts.
Each appellate petition and appeal constitutes “litigation.” (McColm
v. Westwood Park Assn. (1998) 62 Cal.App.4th 1211, 1216; >Fink v. Shemtov (2010) 180 Cal.App.4th
1160, 1170.) The critical finding is
whether “the litigant’s actions are unreasonably impacting the objects of
appellant’s actions and the courts as contemplated by the statute.” (Morton
v. Wagner, supra,> 156 Cal.App.4th at p. 971; >In re Kinney, supra, 201 Cal.App.4th at
p. 958.)href="#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" title="">^[2]

Wells falls
into multiple categories under the vexatious litigant statute. First, he filed at least five appeals or
petitions that were decided adversely to him within the last seven years. Second, he repeatedly litigated a matter that
was finally determined against him regarding his nonownership of the Corona
property, as detailed in the State Bar Court opinion. Third, he filed innumerable unmeritorious
motions and pleadings—some 144 of them—in the State Bar Court.

Wells’s
five adverse appellate rulings involve his two favorite targets: Richard Ciotti and Barbara Dailey. These two individuals—neither of them
lawyers—were unfortunate enough to come into Wells’s orbit and do business with
him. Little did they know that Wells
would later use his legal training to try to destroy them financially with repeated
lawsuits and appeals. Wells’s dispute
with Ciotti began in 2001, and still it continues with the recent conclusion of
yet another meritless appeal from Wells.

As detailed
in the State Bar Court opinion, Wells’s behavior toward his long-time employee
Barbara Dailey was so egregious that it warranted disbarment. In multiple instances of dishonesty under
oath, Wells declared that he never owned an interest in the Corona property,
then claimed that he was the owner. The
courts repeatedly ruled that Dailey is the 100 percent owner of the property,
yet Wells obsessively continued to sue Dailey, in direct contravention of
principles of res judicata.

Even after
repeated trial court and appellate iterations that Dailey is the sole owner of
the Corona property, Wells persists. In
his latest filing, an opposition to the OSC re vexatious litigant status, Wells
writes on page one, “Contrary to the State bar’s assertion, Barbara Dailey [ ]
did not buy the Corona property; I did.”
Although the Supreme Court rejected his claims, Wells is still bent on
retrying the issue of ownership of the Corona property in this court,
disparaging the Supreme Court’s review as “cloaked in the façade of the rule of
law and justice.”

Not content
to inflict misery on hapless individuals, Wells deployed his vexatious
litigation tactics in the State Bar Court, filing 144 unmeritorious motions
that the court described as truculent, not tenacious. Because Wells was disbarred in part for being
a vexatious litigant with respect to Barbara Dailey and the Corona property, we
have no difficulty in declaring him a vexatious litigant. Though he is no longer a lawyer, Wells’s
conduct unreasonably impacts the public and the courts. (In re
Kinney, supra, 201 Cal.App.4th at
p. 958.)

Wells argues
that his business interests require him to be able to sue others. The courthouse doors are not closed to Wells,
if he can establish a potentially meritorious claim. While baseless litigation is not
constitutionally protected, the vexatious litigant statutes allow litigation to
proceed upon a proper showing that a proposed lawsuit or appeal has merit and
was not filed for purposes of harassment or delay. (Wolfe
v. George (9th Cir. 2007) 486 F.3d 1120, 1124-1125; Code Civ. Proc., § 391.7.)

For the reasons
we have stated, William G. Wells (aka W.G. Wells) is a vexatious litigant. This opinion will serve as a prefiling order
prohibiting Wells from filing any new litigation in the courts of this state
without first obtaining leave of the presiding judge. (Code Civ. Proc., § 391.7, subd.
(a).) Disobedience of this order will be
punished as a contempt of court. (>Ibid; Shalant v. Girardi, supra,> 51 Cal.4th at p. 1170.) This applies to appeals and writ petitions,
as well as to new litigation in the trial court. The

clerk of this court is directed to provide a copy of this
opinion and order to the Judicial Council.
(Code Civ. Proc., § 391.7, subd. (f).)

NOT TO
BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS.



BOREN,
P.J.

We concur:



DOI TODD,
J.



ASHMANN-GERST,
J.