Manly v. Excelsior Nutrition CA4/3

Filed 6/3/25 Manly v. Excelsior Nutrition CA4/3

NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS

California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

FOURTH APPELLATE DISTRICT

DIVISION THREE

CHARLES MANLY,

Plaintiff and Appellant, G062395

v. (Super. Ct. No. 30-2020-01131220)

EXCELSIOR NUTRITION, INC., OPINION

Defendant and Respondent.

Appeal from a judgment of the Superior Court of Orange County, Nathan T. Vu, Judge. Affirmed. Charles Manly, in pro. per., for Plaintiff and Appellant. George Bean Law and George H. Bean for Defendant and Respondent. * * *

Charles Manly (Manly) appeals from a judgment entered in favor of Excelsior Nutrition, Inc. (Excelsior) following a jury trial. Unfortunately, Manly’s brief suffers from several flaws which make it difficult for us to assess the merits of his claims. From what we can review, we find no merit to Manly’s appeal and affirm the judgment. STATEMENT OF FACTS Excelsior hired Manly as a Quality Control Technician. Excelsior later terminated Manly for violating company policy. Manly sued Excelsior claiming they unlawfully terminated him. Following trial in which a jury found against Manly on all his causes of action, the court entered judgment in favor of Excelsior. DISCUSSION I. FORFEITURE OF APPELLATE CLAIMS We begin with a brief discussion of appellate principles and requirements. An understanding of these is necessary for a successful appeal, and these apply equally to propria persona litigants and attorneys. (Nwosu v. Uba (2004) 122 Cal.App.4th 1229, 1246–1247 (Nwosu).) The most fundamental rule of appellate procedure is “a trial court judgment is ordinarily presumed to be correct and the burden is on an appellant to demonstrate, on the basis of the record presented to the appellate court, that the trial court committed an error that justifies reversal of the judgment.” (Jameson v. Desta (2018) 5 Cal.5th 594, 609.) ‘“In the absence of a contrary showing in the record, all presumptions in favor of the trial court’s action will be made by the appellate court.’” (Ibid.) ‘“This means that an appellant must do more than assert error and leave it to the appellate court to search the record and the law books to test his claim. The appellant