Stating that “unlawful detainer statutes are to be strictly construed,” the Supreme Court in Dr. Leevil, LLC v. Westlake Health Care Center, today holds that an owner acquiring title to property under a power of sale contained in a deed of trust must perfect title, including by recording the trustee’s deed, before serving the three-day notice to quit that precedes an unlawful detainer action. Among other things, the court’s unanimous opinion by Justice Ming Chin relies on “choices of verb tense” in the relevant statute to support its conclusion.
The opinion notes that the stricter interpretation has a particularly beneficial effect “where the possessor of the property is a tenant of the former owner, not the former owner itself,” because, in that situation, if title hasn’t first been perfected, “the tenant may not know whether the entity serving the notice to quit is a bona fide owner.”
The court reverses the Second District, Division Six, Court of Appeal. It sides instead with a 2016 opinion by the appellate division of the San Diego County Superior Court.
The appellate division opinion was published in 2016 because the Supreme Court ordered it. The Court of Appeal nonetheless expressly disagreed with the opinion. “A Supreme Court order to publish is not an expression of the court’s opinion of the correctness of the result of the decision or of any law stated in the opinion” (rule 8.1120(d)), but in this case it might have been a hint that the Court of Appeal didn’t take.
