Nguyen v. Le CA4/3

Filed 1/23/23 Nguyen v. Le 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NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or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 This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.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

BINH NGOC NGUYEN et al.,

Plaintiffs and Respondents, G061299

v. (Super. Ct. No. 30-2020-01147289)

JENNY M. LE, OPI NION

Defendant and Appellant.

Appeal from an order of the Superior Court of Orange County, Deborah C. Servino, Judge. Affirmed. John L. Dodd & Associates and John L. Dodd; O’Brien & Peterson and R. Thomas Peterson for Defendant and Appellant. No appearance for Plaintiffs and Respondents.

INTRODUCTION This is an appeal from an order denying a motion for her attorney fees made by Jenny Le after the trial court dismissed a partition action in which she and her ex-husband, Lang Dao (Lang), were defendants. The court dismissed the action after the plaintiffs, Lien Kim Dao and Binh Ngoc Nguyen (Lang’s sister and brother-in-law), did not appear for trial. Le subsequently moved for her attorney fees and court costs. The court granted the motion for costs, but denied the motion for fees. We affirm the order. Le did not submit sufficient evidence that her attorney fees were incurred for the common benefit of all parties. The statute under which Le sought her fees requires them to be incurred for the common benefit, and she failed to meet the requirement. We therefore cannot find that the court abused its discretion in denying the motion. FACTS Le, Lang, Dao, and Nguyen were joint tenants of a piece of real property in Santa Ana. They took title by grant deed in December 1990. Le and Lang were divorced in May 2011. The dissolution judgment required Lang to pay Le spousal support and an equalization amount. Evidently he did not make the required payments. Le entered a cloistered Buddhist convent in July 2011, shortly after her divorce from Lang, and has purportedly taken a vow of poverty. According to Le’s counsel, Le hired him in November 2019 to assist her in collecting the spousal support and equalization payment Lang owed her. She agreed, however, to forego the spousal support owed to her after June 2011, when she entered the convent. She gave her son, Lance Dao, power of attorney and assigned her rights to the payments ordered by the dissolution judgment to him. Le’s counsel declared the four owners agreed to sell the property in 2019. He did not specify when in 2019 this decision was made. The record includes a listing