Perez v. Dimenco CA3

Filed 2/3/26 Perez v. Dimenco CA3 NOT TO BE PUBLISHED California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or ordered published,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 This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.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 THIRD APPELLATE DISTRICT (San Joaquin) ----

JESUS MADRIGAL PEREZ, C101372

Plaintiff, Cross-defendant and (Super. Ct. No. Respondent, STK-CV-URP-2019-0000701)

v.

ROSEANNE DIMENCO,

Defendant, Cross-complainant and Appellant.

Defendant Roseanne Dimenco appeals from the trial court’s order disqualifying the law firm representing her after it hired an attorney who previously worked for the law firm representing plaintiff Jesus Madrigal Perez. We affirm. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND We adopt the facts from the court’s order granting plaintiff’s motion to disqualify defendant’s counsel. Defendant does not argue the court’s recitation of facts was

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incorrect or unsupported by the declarations submitted by the parties, only that the facts do not support disqualification. Eurik O’Bryant worked for the law firm Sekhon & O’Bryant when plaintiff retained the law firm as counsel in the present case. O’Bryant reviewed plaintiff’s initial case file and initiated communications with opposing counsel before Simran Sekhon took over the case. The time records show O’Bryant billed 0.1 hours (or six minutes) in this case. O’Bryant also billed 0.5 hours (or 30 minutes) in plaintiff’s related unlawful detainer case. O’Bryant subsequently left the Sekhon & O’Bryant law firm and joined Kroloff, Belcher, Smart, Perry & Christopherson (Kroloff), which represents defendant in the present case. Before O’Bryant’s departure, plaintiff’s file was downloaded from the Sekhon & O’Bryant law firm’s cloud server by someone other than Sekhon. O’Bryant declared that, after leaving the Sekhon & O’Bryant law firm, he had access to plaintiff’s files on a hard drive, which he deleted without sharing with anyone at Kroloff. He also declared that he had access to plaintiff’s files via cloud storage at the time of the disqualification motion, but he never accessed the files nor did the attorney currently representing defendant at Kroloff have access to plaintiff’s files. Kroloff built an ethical wall around O’Bryant concerning this case and he has not worked on this case in any capacity. Seven months after O’Bryant left the Sekhon & O’Bryant law firm, plaintiff filed a motion to disqualify Kroloff from representing defendant. The trial court granted the motion, finding O’Bryant was in possession of confidential information related to plaintiff’s case. Defendant appeals. DISCUSSION Defendant argues the trial court erroneously disqualified Kroloff from representing her. We disagree.