Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: evicted but not locked out yet

The five days are business days, and they don't do lockouts on Mondays (at least in South Orange County). In theory, the five days is up today and you may be locked out today or tomorrow. You can go to court tomorrow morning and seek a temporary restraining order, however, you would have to have already provided notice to the landlord that you were going to appear (assuming the court with jurisdiction even hears TRO matters tomorrow), and have all your papers ready for court tomorrow morning (or whatever time your court hears these). It is a very difficult thing for a non-attorney to do, but not impossible. Convincing a judge to stop an eviction, however, is much harder than other forms of TROs. With the case having been heard and lost, and an appeal lost, you don't have really good odds of prevailing in a TRO hearing. I guess my questions to you are (1) what does the fraud case have to do with an eviction - unless the landlord defrauded you, and even then probably not a defense, (2) children get evicted all the time along with their parents - sad but true, (3) tenants don't always have to be served individually, and if the order only says to evict you and your children, then the Sherrif will leave the other tenants in place. Most competent attorneys who handle Unlawful Detainers, however, serve something called a Pre-Judgment Claim of Right to Possession form with the complaint. Its intended to be given to unnamed tenants who claim a right to stay even if you are evicted. If they didn't file that prior to judgment, everyone in the place will be evicted. Based on the very limited information you have provided, I just don't see grounds for a judge to stop this. Good luck.

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Re: evicted but not locked out yet

I agree with Mr. Gibbs. You only get one appeal at each level. At the trial court level, there were two things you could have done: ask for a new trial, or appeal to the Court of Appeal. Code of Civil Procedure section 1178.

An appeal does not automatically stay proceedings on the judgment. Petition for stay of proceedings (i.e., the eviction) must be directed to the same judge who gave the unfavorable judgment. Code of Civil Procedure section 1176(a), which is too long to quote in full here, but you should look it up and study it. The judge would very likely require you to pay rent during any stay on appeal.

A problem with any appeal is that they are expensive, even to prepare and file. Another problem is that grounds for appeal are pretty much limited to error made by the trial court - you can't allege new theories or plead facts you knew or could have discovered for trial. Courts of Appeal don't correct losing-party mistakes, they correct trial judge mistakes.