Hanna v. City of Fresno
Plaintiff Rimon Hanna appeals from a judgment entered after the trial court granted the defendant police officers' motion for summary judgment. Hanna contends the trial court erred in concluding that he lacked standing to assert claims for breach of contract, fraud and civil conspiracy.
Defendants argue that Hanna lacked standing because (1) the oral contract alleged by Hanna was made with his corporation and not Hanna personally, (2) the alleged fraudulent misrepresentations were made to the corporation and not Hanna personally, and (3) the damages alleged in Hanna's pleading were suffered by the corporation, not Hanna.
The first step in our independent review of the motion for summary judgment is to identify the issues framed by the complaint and answer because those are the issues to which a defendant's motion must respond, not the issues the defendant wished these pleadings had raised. In this case, the defendants misinterpreted Hanna's operative complaint, which caused their separate statement of undisputed facts to be insufficient to justify a judgment in their favor. The facts in defendants' separate statements failed to establish that the corporation was the contracting party or that the alleged fraud was directed at the corporation and not Hanna. Thus, the separate statement failed to make a prima facie showing that Hanna lacked standing to assert his claims for breach of contract, fraud and civil conspiracy or that he suffered no damages from defendants' allegedly wrongful conduct.
Therefore, the judgment is reversed and the matter remanded for further proceedings.
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