Qiu v. Saint Francis Memorial Hospital CA1/2

Filed 3/14/22 Qiu v. Saint Francis Memorial Hospital CA1/2 NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or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 This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.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

HAIQING QIU, Plaintiff and Appellant, A159716 v. SAINT FRANCIS MEMORIAL (San Francisco County HOSPITAL et al., Super. Ct. No. CGC 19572886) Defendants and Respondents.

Plaintiff Haiqing Qiu filed a lawsuit against defendants Dignity Community Care (Dignity) doing business as Saint Francis Memorial Hospital and the City and County of San Francisco (City). The lawsuit related to the death of his mother, and Qiu alleged “a malpractice wrongful death compensation case.” Qiu represented himself. He also informed the trial court he does not understand English and he first wrote the complaint in Chinese and then it was translated into English. The City filed a motion for judgment on the pleadings, and the trial court granted the City’s motion without leave to amend on December 3, 2019. Dignity moved for terminating sanctions based on discovery violations, and the trial court granted Dignity’s motion and entered a judgment of dismissal on December 19, 2019.

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Qiu filed a notice of appeal, in which he wrote he was appealing orders dated “10-15-2019” and “12-19-2019.” This appears to refer to an order granting Dignity’s motion to compel discovery, which was filed October 15, 2019, and the judgment of dismissal filed December 19, 2019. Qiu also intends to appeal the order granting the judgment on the pleadings in favor of the City, and the City has filed a respondent’s brief. Qiu has continued to represent himself on appeal. On August 27, 2020, this court received a lengthy document from Qiu titled “Supplementary Appeal Complaint in 124 Pages, Attachment” part of which was in Chinese. After several months passed and Qiu submitted no further documents to this court, we treated the “Supplemental Appeal Complaint” as his opening brief, and, on April 23, 2021, issued a detailed order stating that it did not comply with the California Rules of Court 1 concerning the contents and format of briefs. Among other things, the document contained no citations to the record on appeal (rule 8.204(a)(1)(C)), lacked pertinent or intelligible legal argument (rule 8.204(a)(1)(B); see also Berger v. Godden (1985) 163 Cal.App.3d 1113, 1116-1120 (Berger)), and did not include a certificate of interested entities or persons (rule 8.208). In addition, the document did not identify the order or judgment appealed from (rule 8.204(a)(2)) and did not include a certificate of word count (rule 8.204(c)(1)). We ordered that the “Supplemental Appeal Complaint” not be filed and that it be returned to Qiu. It was further ordered that Qiu file a brief in compliance with the California Rules of Court within 20 days. On June 2, 2021, this court received Qiu’s opening brief, which still did not comply with the California Rules of Court concerning the contents and form of briefs. The brief lacked citations to the record, lacked pertinent and