Singman v. IMDB.com, Inc.

• Court: California Court of Appeal
• Decided: December 20, 2021
• Docket: B307783
• Status: Published

Opinion

Filed 12/20/21 CERTIFIED FOR PUBLICATION

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

SECOND APPELLATE DISTRICT

DIVISION EIGHT

BRUCE H. SINGMAN, B307783

Plaintiff and Appellant, Los Angeles County Super. Ct. No. 20SMCV00748 v.

IMDB.COM, INC.,

Defendant and Respondent.

APPEAL from an order of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, Elaine W. Mandel, Judge. Affirmed.

Bruce H. Singman, in pro. per., for Plaintiff and Appellant.

Hueston Hennigan, Moez M. Kaba, Joseph A. Reiter and Eunice Leong for Defendant and Respondent.

____________________ Attorney Bruce H. Singman sued and lost in the trial court. Serving as his own attorney, he appeals his defeat. His brief on appeal—there is only one, for he filed no reply—contains a table of authorities. That table has one entry. That entry is section 904.1, subdivision (a)(1) of the Code of Civil Procedure, which authorizes appeals from judgments. This section does not impeach the trial court result. No other legal citations appear in this brief. We presume the trial court result is correct. (Jameson v. Desta (2018) 5 Cal.5th 594, 608–609.) The one contesting that result thus bears the burden of showing legal error. That requires legal authority. Here we have none. This appellant’s brief effectively asks the appellate court to become the appellant’s lawyer. A court cannot fairly embrace this partisan role. An absence of legal authority forfeits an appellant’s cause. (E.g., Gonzalez v. City of Norwalk (2017) 17 Cal.App.5th 1295, 1311.) DISPOSITION We affirm the order and award costs to the respondent. The motion to strike is moot.

WILEY, J. We concur:

GRIMES, Acting P. J. HARUTUNIAN, J. *

* Judge of the San Diego Superior Court, assigned by the Chief Justice pursuant to article VI, section 6 of the California Constitution.