April 07, 2022
By GREG LITTLE Editor
It was an odd scene on Monday morning in Mariposa County Superior Court.
A hearing, kind of, was held in the matter against local former landowner Jerry Cox, who has been the subject of countless hearings over the past five years.
But on Monday, it appeared little had been done in preparation for a hearing — and the judge said he hadn’t even read the pleadings which have been filed in the past couple of months in the case.
According to the court filings, Mariposa County was seeking a summary adjudication from Cox for various violations at his former property. Cox, owner of JDC Land Co., lost his property two years ago when former Mariposa County Superior Court Judge Dana Walton allowed it to be sold as part of a receivership.
That case drug on for years in court before a ruling was finally handed down by the court the 436-acre parcel, which included a house and cabins, could be sold. The property was sold for around $700,000, a figure Cox has said all along was only about half of what it was worth.
However, that became irrelevant when the judge allowed the sale to go through.
Since that time, though, Walton has retired from the bench and the case was turned over to Judge Robert Moody, a retired jurist from Monterey who handles various cases around the region at the request of local courts.
On Monday, the law firm Silver & Wright, who has been working for the county for years on this case, asked the judge for a judgment against Cox, though the documentation does not specify any monetary amount.
The motion by the county raised various points. One was for a summary judgment against Cox for violation of health and safety codes on the land he used to own. Cox was found guilty of violating 101 safety codes, however, he has disputed how that all transpired and said correcting the violations cost less than $10,000.
It is also asking for a judgment against Cox for violating nuisance ordinances at the property. It was also asking for a judgment based on Cox violated public nuisance laws. The complaint also stated that Cox violated agritourism and transient rental occupancy laws in the county. It also said Cox violated business and professional standards and the Unfair Competition Law.
All of the above, the county argued, had been upheld by the California Court of Appeals.
Nowhere in the documents does is set a dollar amount for any judgment.
Cox has maintained for several years he is homeless and has no money because of the actions the county took to take his land.
So much so, he currently has a case pending in federal court — another matter that surfaced on Monday.
The judge said at the start of the hearing he had not read the filing by the county nor the filing by Cox’s attorney countering the request.
While on the bench, he did obtain copies of both but said he would have to do further research.
Cox’s attorney, Omair Farooqui, said the entire filing was nothing but smoke and mirrors from the county.
“This is part of the charade that is going on here,” he said.
Farooqui said the county was doing nothing more than trying to get a ruling to look better in the federal case.
Farooqui said the request from the county in this case could not be met because there was “no trial” when it came to the issues at hand.
Though Farooqui was not involved in the case when the issues being discussed on Monday were first aired, he did say at that time the court denied Cox any chance to offer evidence, take depositions and there was “limited discovery” in the case.
That all happened several years ago when Cox’s former attorney, Marc Angelucci, argued over and over again with Walton about not being allowed to submit evidence to the court regarding what had taken place at Cox’s property after it had been seized by the county. Angelucci was murdered in July 2020 in a case that made national headlines.
Since that time, Cox has had to find a different attorney as well as attempt to retrieve documents in the case which he said were at Angelucci’s home and then seized by officials in San Bernardino County. All of that delayed the case for more than a year.
Fujji on Monday kept referring to a California Court of Appeals decision and justifying that ruling as why the local court should allow for a summary judgment.
However, as Farooqui reminded the judge, the court of appeals decision was solely on whether a receiver should be appointed in the case. He said the nuts and bolts of the case were not considered by the court.
“We want to wrap this up,” said Fujji.
https://www.mariposagazette.com/articles/hearing-on-cox-case-has-no-result/
