In re Mahoney

Filed 6/10/21 CERTIFIED FOR PUBLICATION

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

FOURTH APPELLATE DISTRICT

DIVISION THREE

In re PAUL M. MAHONEY on Contempt.

SALSBURY ENGINEERING, INC., G057832 (Consol. with G057966) Plaintiff, Cross-Defendant and Appellant, (Super. Ct. No. 30-2015-00789263)

v. OPINION

CONSOLIDATED CONTRACTING SERVICES, INC.,

Defendant, Cross-complainant and Respondent.

Appeal from a judgment and order of the Superior Court of Orange County, Craig L. Griffin, Judge. Paul. M. Mahoney, in pro. per. THE COURT:* These contempt proceedings arise from a petition for rehearing filed by Attorney Paul Mahoney on behalf of his client Salsbury Engineering Inc., in which he impugned the integrity of both the trial court and this court. In that petition, he cited not a single statute or opinion and made no attempt to explain, distinguish, or otherwise reply to the cases and statutes relied upon by the trial court and this one. Instead he filed nine pages of text that more closely resembled a rant than a petition. ______________________ * Before Bedsworth, Acting P.J., Aronson, J., and Goethals, J.

We issued an order to show cause to give Attorney Mahoney an opportunity to explain why he “should not be held in contempt for language ‘impugning the integrity of the court in a document filed with the court.’ (In re Koven (2005) 134 Cal.App.4th 262, 271; see also In re Buckley (1973) 10 Cal.3d 237, 248.)” In that order, we made clear the language the court felt impugned its integrity. We specified that: “On March 17, 2021, Attorney Paul M. Mahoney and Mahoney & Soll LLP filed a petition for rehearing in this matter on behalf of appellant Salsbury Engineering, Inc. (Salsbury). The petition did not analyze a single statute or decision. It made no effort to deal with the specific language of the contract at issue in this case, which supports the trial court’s ruling. It made no effort to explain why notices of completion for the first two phases of construction were not recorded until the end of the JOST project, an indicator the parties involved viewed the project as integrated. It made no effort to explain why retainage was not returned to Salsbury on completion of phases 1 and 2, as would have been expected if they had been regarded by the parties as separate contracts. It made no effort to explain why, if these were separate contracts, the owner did not release to Consolidated Contracting Services, retention funds upon completion of each phase. It made no effort to explain where we had erred in distinguishing the Hunt and Arntz cases upon which Salsbury had relied. (Arntz Contracting Co. v. St. Paul Fire & Marine Ins. Co. (1996) 47 Cal.App.4th 464; Hunt v. Fahnestock (1990) 220 Cal.App.3d 628.) “In short, rather than attempt to convince the court its reasoning was faulty, you indulged in an unprofessional rant that impugned the integrity of the court, including casting the following aspersions regarding the court’s opinion filed March 2, 2021: “⚫ ‘Our society has been going down the tubes for a long time, but when you see it in so black and white as in the opinion in this case, it makes you wonder