A jury found for plaintiff tenant-in-common on issues arising from a sale by defendant tenant-in-common, including fraud and breach of contract. After the trial court ordered partition and sale, defendant recorded a declaration of homestead. Plaintiff offered to buy the property and moved to expunge the homestead. The Superior Court of Los Angeles County, California, found the homestead unenforceable against plaintiff, and defendant appealed.
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Overview
Plaintiff argued, and the trial court agreed, that the homestead claim was barred by res judicata, as it was not raised in the prior equitable and legal proceedings. In affirming, the appeals court noted that, in California, a “cause of action” was defined by the “primary right” theory. If the matter was within the scope of the action, related to the subject matter, and relevant to the issues, so that it could have been raised, the judgment was conclusive, despite the fact that it was not in fact expressly pleaded or otherwise urged. The trial court properly relied on a precedent that held that a wife should have asserted her homestead claim in a prior maintenance action and was precluded from relitigating the issue of the scope of her interest in the property in a subsequent partition proceeding. Although plaintiff in this action had not recorded the homestead during the prior proceedings, she could have asserted the automatic homestead pursuant to Cal. Code Civ. Proc. ยง 704.720, which would have required the court to make findings concerning the value of the property, the amount of the homestead, and whether the exemption even applied in the first place.
Outcome
The court affirmed the judgment of the trial court.