8/2/2022 - Case Management Conference 

1. Substitute Service  

   1. At  the Case Management Conference she asked about the substitute service.  It seemed apparent she hadn't read the documents we submitted.  

   2. We explained that we served Carriaga at Wheeler Termite Headquarters as listed with the Structural Pest Control Board because the company listed on the report was Wheeler Termite. We viewed Carriaga as an employee or subcontractor to wheeler termite.  NOTE Wheeler Termite HQ is a residential property (aka a Home office situation) 

   3. As Vallarta could see on the service documents, the first attempt was made and the person contacted at Wheeler HQ knew Carriaga had worked for them but was unsure of his current status and said she'd need to ask her husband about him/it.  

   4. When the process server returned two days later, the same person accepted service thus we, and our service processor,  felt it was a fully valid substitute service. 

2. Reason for suing Carriaga and not Company

   1. At  the Case Management Conference she asked about logic of who we sued. 

   2. We indicated that Carriaga was the "licensed person" who signed the report with an attestation he had followed all statutes and protocols

   3. We indicated the inspectors were was separately licensed as individuals who then had to affiliate with Licensed companies to do work. (similar to real estate agents).  

   4. Whether he was an employee or a subcontractor, Carriaga was the only person at the inspection, and thus  he was the only person who could be pursued for fraud.  Wheeler Termite could claim negligence and the seller could claim negligence on most of the fraud related matters, thus Carriage was the person to pursue. 

   5. When asked about the desire to collect from insurance we reminded her that Professional Liability Insurance has exemptions for fraud. 

   6. She seemed satisfied with our logic

3. Default Set Aside  was explained away in an insincere manner

   1. At the conference she said she did NOT set aside our default, she just failed to sign our judgment. 

   2. That was a false statement of fact, that can be verified with the out of court entry.   

   3. At that point we felt she was not being sincere and then she started spinning into something else that made no sense...

4. "it's illegal to ask for punitive damages in a complaint". (?)

   1. She quoted the statute she relied on to make her decision to set aside default due to lack of notice. 

   2. We had looked it up prior to the hearing and addressed that in our documents to the court but it seemed clear she had not read those. There is nothing in the statute that says the notice could not be served at the same time as the complaint. and we presented that to her. 

   3. She then stated it was "illegal" to include punitive damages requests in a complaint. 

      1. When asked where that was in the statutes or CCP she had not response. 

      2. When asked why no other Attorneys or Judges in the related cases had taken issue with that she had no response. 

5. She then indicated she had created a hearing date for us to discuss these details and she asked if we had gotten that notice

   1. We indicated we had not and she provided the date

6. It seemed clear she didn't want to apply punitive damages for reasons only known to her. 

   1.  Out of curiosity I asked if we were interested in a judgement without punitive damages, if she would consider that without a need for further service and starting the process all over again. 

   2.  She indicated that would simplify things and we could discuss that at our next hearing. and that was should come prepared to do a prove up hearing if that's what we were interested in doing. 

7. NOTHING ABOUT ANY OF THIS MADE ANY SENSE TO US BUT WE DECIDED WE'D PLAY ALONG TO SEE WHERE IT WENT. . 

8. We like money and we felt we were due money plus some level of punitive damages. That said we had many cases going and felt if we could get an easy one out of the way, we could use that to demand punitive damages for some of the other parties  who had also known about the same omissions .  (thus collect compensatory from him and shoot for compenstaory in joint and several and/or just puniitive from others).