Castellanos v. Zieve

Background

Maria Castellanos filed the lawsuit on April 7, 2022, alleging wrongful foreclosure involving property located at 203 Meghann Ct., Watsonville, California. The complaint alleges that the defendants began a nonjudicial foreclosure without legal authorization because an assignment of rights was invalid. It asserts wrongful foreclosure, violations of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, and other claims. Castellanos was proceeding without counsel.

Castellanos sought a temporary restraining order to prevent a trustee’s sale scheduled for May 26, 2022. She also asked for permission to record a notice of pending litigation, known as a lis pendens, which would give notice that the lawsuit allegedly affected title or possession of the property.

Temporary restraining order

The court treated a temporary restraining order as an extraordinary remedy requiring a clear showing of entitlement. To obtain preliminary relief, a plaintiff must show a likelihood of success, likely irreparable harm without relief, that the balance of equities favors relief, and that an injunction would serve the public interest.

The court found that Castellanos had not shown a likelihood of success. Although the complaint was difficult to understand, the court read it as challenging the enforceability of foreclosure provisions in a deed of trust recorded against the property in September 2006, based on an alleged failure to properly assign the deed to the defendants.

The court noted that related claims had already been dismissed with prejudice in an earlier federal proceeding, including claims that the defendants or their predecessors violated the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and lacked legal authority to begin a nonjudicial foreclosure. The court also noted that a California appellate court had sustained with-prejudice dismissal of Castellanos’s wrongful-foreclosure claim and other claims arising from the same loan transaction and assignment of rights.

The court agreed that Castellanos’s repeated efforts to relitigate the same claims against the same parties implicated claim preclusion. Claim preclusion is a rule that bars a later lawsuit based on claims that were raised, or could have been raised, in an earlier action. The court stated that Castellanos had been a party to the prior actions and had offered no reason she could not adequately litigate her claims in them. It also found that the current claims arose from the same core facts as the earlier claims.

Lis pendens request

The court explained that a lis pendens is a recorded document providing constructive notice that a lawsuit affects title or possession of described real property. Under California law, a self-represented person may record such a notice only with a judge’s approval. The person must show that the pleading contains a real-property claim and establish, by a preponderance of the evidence, the claim’s probable validity—that it is more likely than not that the person will obtain a judgment on the claim.

Because the court was not persuaded that Castellanos was likely to obtain a judgment on any of her claims, it also denied her request for permission to record a lis pendens.

Disposition

Judge Haywood S. Gilliam, Jr. denied Castellanos’s application for a temporary restraining order and denied her request for leave to record a notice of pending litigation. The opinion did not enter a disposition of the underlying lawsuit’s claims beyond ruling on those requests.