Eck v. City of L.A., No. B289717 (D2d7 Oct. 15, 2019)
In Hernandez v. Restoration Hardware, the California Supreme Court held that a class action settlement objector cannot appeal the overruling of her objections unless she becomes a “party aggrieved” of record under Code of Civil Procedure § 902. As the Court explained, the two ways to do that are (1) to move to intervene before the judgment is final or (2) to file a § 663 motion to vacate the judgment. If she does either and her motion is denied, she can raise the issue on an appeal from the denial.
Objector here filed a motion to intervene, which was denied. And then she filed a § 663 motion, which was also denied. Problem for her is that while she filed a notice of appeal on the intervention motion, she didn’t file a second notice to appeal the denial of her post-judgment § 663 motion. Yet, she didn’t argue in her brief that intervention was wrongly denied.
Objector contends that just filing of a § 663 motion was sufficient to give her standing under § 902 to reach the merits of her objections, even in her intervention appeal. But that doesn’t make sense, and it isn’t supported by authority.
You can’t appeal an order outside of your notice of appeal, although the notice is construed liberally. Here, Objector’s notice on the intervention was filed before her § 663 motion was denied, so it couldn’t have encompassed that order, however liberally construed.
So because Objector appealed only the trial court’s denial of her motion to intervene, the merits of the intervention motion posed a gating procedural issue. Objector had to convince the Court of Appeal that intervention was wrongly denied before it could reach the merits of her objection. And since she didn’t even try to do that, she lacked appellate standing.
Appeal dismissed.
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