Marriage of Stupp and Schilders CA1/2

Filed 1/25/22 Marriage of Stupp and Schilders CA1/2 NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or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 This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.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

FIRST APPELLATE DISTRICT

DIVISION TWO

In re the Marriage of STEVEN STUPP and ANNEMARIE SCHILDERS.

STEVEN STUPP, Respondent, A161177, A161576, A162373 v. ANNEMARIE SCHILDERS, (San Mateo County Super. Ct. No. FAM 0110799) Appellant; ESTER ADUT, Appellant.

Ester Adut is the attorney for Annemarie Schilders, who is a party to a long-running marital dissolution. In these consolidated appeals, Adut challenges the family court’s order that she pay $1,050 in sanctions under section 177.5 of the Code of Civil Procedure for violating a lawful court order. The sanctions were imposed after Adut sought a writ of execution for the payment of a discovery sanction against Steven Stupp, the petitioner below, knowing full well that the discovery sanction, which was still being adjudicated, was subject to a stay, and representing under penalty of perjury in the application for writ that no stay of execution of the discovery sanction

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had been granted. The trial court did not err in ordering the sanctions against Adut, and we shall affirm. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND In 2010, Steven Stupp filed a petition to dissolve his marriage to Schilders. A stipulated judgment of dissolution was entered in March 2014, and since then the case has been intensively litigated in the trial court, where several different trial court judges have presided over the matter. The history of the litigation is confusing and chaotic, as reflected in the register of actions, which is over 180 pages long; the hearing transcripts included in the record on appeal; and the description in appellant’s brief of the procedural history of the issue before us.1 The three appeals before us arise from the imposition of sanctions against Adut under Code of Civil Procedure section 177.5 for violating an order made at a hearing on December 19, 2019 (December 2019 hearing).2 Adut was present at that hearing, during which the trial court (Judge Sean P. Dabel) addressed a number of issues. As relevant here, the court stayed an April 23, 2019 discovery sanction in Schilders’s favor (April 2019 order) pending the adjudication of Stupp’s challenges to that sanction. There was no ambiguity about the stay: after hearing extensive argument, Judge Dabel stated that, based on the contents of Stupp’s challenges and the history of the September 2015 motion that led to the April 2019 order, he was “going to stay