In Court

The conduct of record in the courtroom, drawn from the transcript and the filings — the nonpayment posture asserted under oath, read against the documentary payment record. References are to Steven D. Silverstein, California State Bar No. 86466, exclusively. No finding has been made.

The courtroom posture is simple to state and is the whole of the matter: the owner asserted, under oath, that the rent was not paid. This page sets that sworn posture beside the documentary payment record and asks the one question a reviewing court must answer — whether the two can stand together.

The owner’s position of record was that May, June, and July rent went unpaid. That position is the owner’s own statement, advanced through the verified petition and the testimony of record, and it is read here against the payment instruments catalogued in the wire and deposit record (EX-009, EX-010, EX-015, EX-016, EX-018, EX-019). The question presented is not whether the owner believed the rent unpaid; it is whether the documentary record supports the sworn assertion that it was. No finding has been made.

May rent of $5,000 was wired to the owner’s personal Wells Fargo account on April 19, 2024, before the month began. The owner acknowledged that payment on receipt and later told the court there was no May rent. On the owner’s own contract logic a payment is applied to the first unpaid month; with the April 19 payment received, the first-unpaid-month theory has no May to attach to.

A further full payment was made through the managing broker’s office, and the receipt was shown to the court. In court the owner testified that the agent payment was never tendered and gave no accounting of it — and so could not address that the managing broker (Hanson Le, Broker DRE #01358448), who carries a trust-fund duty personal to the broker license (Bus. & Prof. Code § 10145), had received and was holding it. Receipt by the agent is receipt by the principal. Question presented: the action seeks rent the agent had already received, while the owner’s own testimony placed that payment beyond his account.

For the remaining month the owner demanded payment by telephone, directed outside the contract to a private account rather than to the broker; the sender complied, and the funds remain in that account today. That payment, made June 28, 2024, was an electronic-deposit instrument — not a check. The owner characterized it in court as the “late rent,” and elsewhere as a “returned check” and a check “lost in the mail”; on the record it was neither a check nor returned, and it was never given back. (Correction #34.) Opposing counsel’s representation that “we sent back his check” on July 2, 2024 is recited as a party statement; the deposit was not returned and remained in the owner’s account. The unlawful-detainer was filed July 3, 2024, claiming the rent was never paid.

With the April payment received in advance and a further full payment in the agent’s hands before July 1, two full months stood satisfied before the remaining month’s rent was even due. The owner’s in-court theory — that the late payment was owed for an earlier month the broker had held — cannot be reconciled with a contract that applies payment to the first unpaid month, because on that rule the first unpaid month was already paid. This is argument from the documents; it is offered as the contradiction the record presents, not as a finding.

The cure tender of record — cashier’s check #0084411044 — was tendered into the court, returned, and then passed to opposing counsel and to the sender, unendorsed across more than two months (EX-015/EX-016; T-B). The final question put to the plaintiff at trial went, in substance, to whether the check had been cashed; the answer of record was that it had not — the instrument was sealed and uncashed. The owner’s closing position, again in substance, was that payment had come too late and that the instrument had been sent back. Read against Correction #34, the instrument so described was the e-deposit, which was not returned and remains held. The significance is structural: a closing that concedes payment was made, disputing only its timing, cannot sit beside a sworn posture that the rent was never paid. The page presents that as the question; it draws no adverse inference and asserts no finding. Cal. Evid. Code § 913.

A Memorandum of Costs of record was filed in the amount of $2,005 (amount confirmed per Correction #35). Its line composition and disposition are reserved pending extraction from the case file (open target); until then the page states its existence and amount only, and characterizes nothing.

Two named residents of the dwelling were not before the court — Yulia S. Gasio (age 42) and the named senior occupant Tetyana Zvyagintseva (age 65+), named at ¶1.B of the 2022 and 2024 leases. The practice’s own published rule is that an unlawful-detainer action must name and serve every tenant or face dismissal; the question of who was, and was not, before the court is developed on the Procedure page (silverstein-procedure.html) and noted here as it bears on the judgment of record.