Hello. Now I see why you are looking to appeal this thing. It appears that the judge expected you to send notice to every address that you have ever had for this person! As I see it you will have to show that the Judge misinterpreted the statutes and the case law in the requirement for you to send a notice to the address listed on the rental agreement (what was known to you as tenant's Previous Address) -- was that a reasonable interptetation of the statute based upon California case law, and, if there is no California case law, then what about in other states? This is an Error of Law made by the judge (not Error Law as you noted). You could very well have a shot at getting this overturned if you can find some California Case Law that follows your interpretation AND even if you cannot find California case law to that effect, and you CAN find such law in another progressive state (such as NY, MA, ILL) you can use the law of the other state to try to persuade the CA appeals court that CA should be interpreting the statute in the same manner as the other states. Then you will have to have someone sit down and fold everything that is found into a legal brief to the appeals court. Such research & writing will be time consuming and is really beyond what you are offering to pay for it here (I mean no offense). The research is time consuming because not only would you have to search all of the appeals court cases on the issue, but then you would have to search all of the online computer databases to see if there are any lower court decisions that favor your point of view (the lower court cases in CA can also be persuasive to the appeals court -- you can say "Hey, my judge got it wrong, but a judge in a different county got it right -- please Appeals Judges, adopt the other judges' case as the Appellate Law of California".) If the initial research leads to a California Appeals Court or Supreme Court case that was overlooked by your trial judge, then that would be GREAT -- but it is usually not that simple and your judge decided that his interpretation of the statute is to require the LL to send the notice to every address ever known to the LL -- no matter how unreasonable that position might be. If there is absolutely NO LAW anywhere on this point (which I sort of doubt), then you are left in a position of arguing that the trial court judge was simply WRONG in his interpretation of the statute. The appeal CAN be argued that way -- but then it is a real toss up if you will win or not. I see your point here with this and I tend to agree with you -- you ended up with a terrible result and now you are expected to pay a guy who was trying to stiff you in the first place. It appears that you know what you are talking about -- start your research in the CA supreme and appellate courts -- there are websites with case law dating back to the 1800's (sometimes you must pay to access them -- like Westlaw -- but if you use a service like Westlaw you can get access to ALL CA reported cases - even lower courts AND access to the law of all 50 states -- which you might need if nothing in CA is on point for your situation). GOOD LUCK.

Hello Again. HOW TO SEARCH: Once you start pulling caselaw, you will probably have to do some deep reading to find what you need. With Westlaw, each case will have a series of "headnotes" before the actual decision is reported -- in those headnotes, you will see a pretty good summary of each legal issue addressed in the case and what the ruling was for that particular issue (these headnotes are prepped by Westlaw lawyers). Each headnote then refers you to the page and paragraph within the opinion where that particular legal issue is discussed by the court. When you get into actually writing this up, be careful not to cite the headnote in your legal brief -- only the portion of the case where the issue is discussed can be cited. Start your research in the California cases database on Westlaw. Look first for something "on point" (which is the term we use for a case where the fact pattern is similar and the court either came to the same result (bad for you) or an opposite result (good for you)). California Supreme Court cases are your best authority here. If nothing is persuasive from the California Supreme Court, then move into the cases for the California Appellate (appeals) courts. If still nothing good, go into the databases for the California trial courts and look for opinions written by trial judges on this issue -- these opinions would be of equal authority to the opinion given by the judge in your case. If you find a case with a similar fact pattern and the opposite result (LL won) in either the Cali Supreme Court or Appellate court, they are both higher authorities than your trial court judge and you may be able to stop there. If you must get into the CA trial court cases and find one or more with an opposite result than your case, youcan use those opinions to persuade the Appelate court that THOSE trial judges were correct and your trial judge was wrong -- then the Appellate court will take it under advisement and decide how this legal issue will be decided and the lower trial courts will have to follow the Appellate decision on this legal issue from that date forward. If you find nothing in CA law, then move to the following state databases, one by one: NY (this should be the first place you look after CA because NY is a pretty progressive, activist state similar to CA and the CA Supreme Court would be most likely to follow the law from a state like NY than, for example, a state like Alaska). After that, you can try Illinois, Massachusetts, D.C., Delaware, Washington State and so on (hopefully you will not have to search that far!). SEARCHES & SEARCH TERMS: Start by entering the cite for the statute - if any cases in CA courts reference that statute, they will come up. Next try different searches based upon your facts (if you have to go to different states then you will have to use these general searches, obviously). "Abandonment of residential rental property & reasonable notice to tenant" seems like a good search. "Abandonment of rental property & notice to last known address" may be another. Just play with the fact pattern and eventually you will come up with something. And, when you read one case, there may be cites to other cases contained within that case that you can look at also. Once you have found severa cases on point, you then need to determine if they are still good law (this is not a simple process -- if a case is overturned by a higher court or a later decision of the same court, they do not remove the earlier cases -- its up to you to do further research to determine if the case law you are relying on is still good law). To do this, we use a process called "Shepardizing" -- named after the inventor of the system used to determine if a case is good law. Traditionally, a lawyer would then have to turn to another set of books (by Shepard), which are updated several times a year. In Westlaw, they have the Shepardizing process computerized where you simply put in the case cite you are looking to see if it is overturned or not and the computer delivers a list of all cases decided AFTER that case where your case is referenced and tells you if the other cases support the decision or overturn the decision. I believe that it costs a bit extra to Shepardize on Westlaw in addition to using their databases to search for case law on your subject. You should look at the different research "packages" that Westlaw offers and see if you can get full access to the databases of 5 or 6 states and the use of Shepards for a couple of weeks while you are doing your research -- it is NOT cheap -- it may cost you a few hndred dollars for unlimited access for a defined period of time, but the use of Westlaw and one other website -- Lexis -- are the most efficient ways to find what you are looking for AND these are the same databases used by the courts (including your trial judge) to do legal research. If you tried to do all of this using law books, it could take months and you may miss something. LAWYER'S FEES AND So-CALLED "SPECIALTIES": I have gotten this question before. Regarding specialization, most states do not recognize any legal "specialties" -- because as lawyers we are all "generalists" in the eyes of our licensing boards -- we only begin to specialize in an area of the law when we finish law school (sort of "on the job training") -- so the lawyers who are appellate lawyers do nothing but handle appeals cases (no trials, etc) -- and they get very good at the research and writing the required appellate briefs the way the appeals court likes to see those briefs. Other lawyers may develop "specialties" in real estate law or personal injury law, etc, just because those are the cases that seemed to roll in the door when they began their practices (these are usually your regular self employed lawyers). Firm lawyers differ by the size of the firm -- in the large nation wide or state wide firm, lawyers are assigned to "practice areas" and while there may be some cross-over into other departments, those lawyers usually spend their careers in that one practice area. If you hired a large or medium firm, the lawyers assigned to do the research and initial drafting are usually only a year or two out of law school ($200 an hour) -- then their work is reviewed and revised by a partner (at $500 an hour!), so charges can get very high very quick. Regarding the QUALITY of all of these types of lawyers -- well -- as in any profession and even at the highest practice levels, there can be incompetence, general laziness, etc., etc. Then, you can find very very good solo practitioners who left a firm or set routine because they want to have a better life for themselves with more quality time with family. Most solo practitioners in the northeast charge between $175 and $250 an hour depending upon their years in practice and the practice area. Finally, any lawyer that you speak to is licensed to take the matter to an appeals court in the state -- the question is whether or not they have the expertise to do the research, writing (even in the law, there are poor writers) and prepare the oral argument that must be made in front of the judges. Generally, if I were preparing this appeal, I would estimate that it would take me 10-20 ish hours of research and reviewing cases to get you what you need and then probably the same again to write the briefs and paperwork for the case. Those are estimates which could be lower (if I find something on point right away, that is good - and less expensive, but usually when an issue goes up on appeal it is already a cloudy area at best), or could very well be higher if it is harder to find something on point, which makes it more difficult to craft the right argument in the written materials (that's where we have to get creative). At $150 per hour, for 40 hours, that is still $6,000 -- and that does not include the appellate argument and any follow up needed to finish up the appeal -- so you can see why you are being told that an appeal will cost you 6-10K. I also know that the general public does not believe that lawyers are worth that much money (funny, they do not argue with their doctors fees LOL), but when you actually get into researching this thing, you might get a taste of the difficult level of what we do. I hope that all of the information I have provided here helps you to move in the right direction with this. If you find certain case law and you would like me or any of the other JA lawyers to take a look at the case and let you know if we believe it applies or to give you some pointers on how to use it you can provide any one of us with the cite to the case and we can take a look at it for you. Regarding the amount that you should offer here at JA for that service -- well, that is up to you. However, I can tell you that most of the legal experts here at JA would probably look at one or two cases per question posed and you would have to think about what you might offer for that service -- keeping in mind that many of the experts here will pass over questions that they feel are not priced appropriately for the amount of work being requested. Most of the experts here at the legal arm of JA do this because we enjoy helping people who otherwise could not afford to speak with a lawyer and making a few dollars for doing it, but if the customer seems to be asking for an incredible amount of work for a small amount offered, many of the lawyers may not want to pick up the question. You initially ran into me after another expert was involved with you, but I am one of the lawyers here who does not mind explaining a process to a customer -- some of our lawyers prefer just to answer a question in a paragraph or two and that is it. I don't mind doing the "explanation" type questions as long as it is worth my while. So, those are all things to think about as you move forward with this process.

Edited by Mary Meaden Esq on 11/4/2009 at 7:39 AM