Court Record

The unlawful detainer action filed July 3, 2024 in the Orange County Superior Court, Central Justice Center — its procedural history through the January 27, 2025 trial and the March 27, 2025 Under Submission Ruling, post-judgment cashier’s checks tendered under protest, the April 24, 2026 acquisition of the parallel Harman filings, and the April 29, 2026 sworn declaration preserving the trial record.

Case caption

Procedural posture

The March 27, 2025 Minute Order — operative language

The Court’s findings include, verbatim:

The Court’s acknowledgment of the cashier’s check is the operative language that places the cure tender into the court record. The check’s amount ($4,338.48), date (May 28, 2024), and payee (Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices) are set out as findings of fact. The full cure-tender analysis, including the Civil Code § 1942 repair-and-deduct arithmetic and the USPS Certified Mail delivery (“Signed for by H H” on May 30, 2024), appears in Section 4.

Exhibits admitted and excluded

The Minute Order identifies specific exhibits admitted into evidence by the Court, and specifically identifies exhibits not admitted:

The documentary record placed before the Court in the summary unlawful detainer proceeding included the cashier’s check, photographs of mold, communications between the parties, and text messages regarding the dishwasher. The broader documentary record examined throughout this case file — the Wells Fargo sixteen-month wire transfer history, the April 2, 2024 inducement email, the April 25, 2024 “Witches burnt Broom” email, the April 26, 2024 executed lease with payment directed to the broker’s personal account, and the June 28, 2024 wire marked “Unknown Contract for July payment 27 of 37 on contracts” — was not placed before the Court in a procedural posture that permitted full examination.

Trial record — preservation channel and contemporaneous declaration

Department C61 of the Orange County Superior Court does not employ an in-court reporter for limited civil unlawful detainer matters. The verbatim trial transcript is therefore not produced as a routine artifact of the proceeding. The operative channel for obtaining a verbatim trial record is the electronic-audio request under California Code of Civil Procedure § 1161.2(a)(1)(A), which requires a separate court-reporter or court-audio order issued from Department C61. As of the date of this section, the Gasio trial verbatim audio has not yet been obtained; its production requires that separate order.

To preserve the contemporaneous record of trial events pending the audio request, the defendant Michael A. Gasio executed a sworn declaration on April 29, 2026, under penalty of perjury pursuant to California Code of Civil Procedure § 2015.5. The declaration sets out the events of the January 27, 2025 trial date in their contemporaneous detail and is preserved in the case-file Google Docs repository.

The declaration includes, of record, counsel’s final question on cross-examination, which by the defendant’s contemporaneous account and pending the verbatim audio described above asked in substance whether he had cashed the check — to which, by the same account, the defendant answered that he had not The instrument at issue in the question on the trial-record evidentiary chain was the July 2024 rent refund check the landlord asserted at trial he had mailed to the defendant; no USPS proof of service of that instrument was produced. The defendant’s answer accurately reflected the contemporaneous documentary record — no refund instrument was received, endorsed, or deposited. The Court’s acknowledgment of the underlying $4,338.48 cashier’s check tendered to Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices on May 30, 2024 is reflected in the Minute Order quoted above. The post-judgment cashier’s checks #0084411978 and #0084412016 documented below were issued after the January 27, 2025 trial and are accordingly not the instrument at issue in the cross-examination question.

Source: Sworn declaration of Michael A. Gasio under CCP § 2015.5, executed April 29, 2026, preserved in the case-file Google Docs repository; Wells Fargo cashier’s checks #0084411978 and #0084412016; Court Document ID 74522578.

April 5, 2025 — Cashier’s check under protest

Following the March 27, 2025 Minute Order, the defendants tendered a cashier’s check to the Clerk of the Court in the amount of the adjudicated sum, marked explicitly as payment under protest:

The cashier’s check was issued by Wells Fargo Bank at the same Huntington Beach branch address (19840 Beach Blvd.) that the Three-Day Notice of June 21, 2024 had designated as the required in-person payment location. The check was made payable directly to the Clerk of the Court, with the memorandum line reading “PAYMENT UNDER PROTEST,” preserving the defendants’ position that the payment was being made in compliance with the court’s order while reserving all rights with respect to the underlying determination.

Source: Wells Fargo cashier’s check #0084411978, Purchaser Copy Pages 1 and 2, dated April 5, 2025.

Pre-April 22, 2025 — The (PROPOSED) AMENDED JUDGMENT transmitted by certified mail

Between the March 27, 2025 Under Submission Ruling and April 22, 2025, the defendant received from opposing counsel, by United States certified mail, a document titled “(PROPOSED) AMENDED JUDGMENT.” The document was drafted on the letterhead of Steven D. Silverstein (CA Bar #86466), 14351 Redhill Avenue Suite G, Tustin CA 92780. The document was captioned in the Superior Court for the State of California, County of Orange, Central Justice Center; recited the case number 30-2024-01410991-CL-UD-CJC; named the assigned commissioner (Carmen D. Snuggs-Spraggins); and set forth findings in the standard court-order recitation format.

The document’s findings:

The signature line of the document reads “DATED: ____________ — JUDGE OF THE SUPERIOR COURT.” The date line is blank. The signature line is blank. The document was not signed by any judge of the Superior Court of California. The word “(PROPOSED)” appears in parentheses in the title.

The document was transmitted by certified mail by counsel of record to a pro se defendant, with the “(PROPOSED)” qualifier in the title as the only textual marker that the document had not been signed by the Court. The defendant retained the scanned text of the document but the original certified-mail envelope and return-receipt green card are no longer in the defendant’s custody. The certified-mail tracking record is preserved in the records of the United States Postal Service, in the file-retention records of opposing counsel’s law office, and in the docket of the Orange County Superior Court — each reachable by subpoena.

April 22, 2025 — Joint-payee cashier’s check issued in response to the unsigned proposed judgment

On April 22, 2025, the defendant issued a second Wells Fargo cashier’s check in response to the certified-mail transmission of the (PROPOSED) AMENDED JUDGMENT. The amount, $5,338.48, equals the demanded sum on the unsigned document ($4,325 + $500 + $500 = $5,325) plus accrued statutory interest of $13.48. The defendant named on the face of the instrument both the landlord and the landlord’s counsel as joint payees.

The instrument places opposing counsel on the face of a tenant-to-landlord court-related payment instrument as a co-recipient of the funds. Whatever subsequent disposition the instrument received — whether endorsed, deposited, declined, or returned — became part of the documentary record by operation of the joint-payee structure. The bank’s processing record on the cashier’s check is preserved by Wells Fargo Bank and is reachable by subpoena.

Source: Wells Fargo cashier’s check #0084412016, Purchaser Copy Pages 1 and 2, dated April 22, 2025; UPS Store #4415 receipt dated April 22, 2025 12:27 PM.

April 24, 2026 — Harman v. Tran case-record acquisition (prior pattern)

On April 24, 2026, the defendant obtained certified copies of three filings from a prior unlawful detainer matter adjudicated in the same Department C61 of the Orange County Superior Court — Harman v. Tran. The filings obtained: ROA #2 (Complaint, 12 pages); ROA #5 (UD-120, 8 pages); ROA #34 (1 page). Court records purchase confirmation #01373P, total fee $30.14.

The Harman filings document a prior instance of the same procedural pattern that produced the Three-Day Notice in this matter: posting of a Three-Day Notice to the door of the same Premises (19235 Brynn Court, Huntington Beach) by the same counsel of record (Steven D. Silverstein, CA Bar #86466), against a prior tenant of the same property. The acquisition of these certified filings supplements the documentary record available to qualified counsel evaluating any post-judgment motion under Code of Civil Procedure § 473 or related procedural channel. The verbatim trial transcript of the Gasio matter has not been obtained; its production requires the separate court-reporter order from Department C61 described in the trial-record section above. The April 24, 2026 court-records purchase produced the Harman filings only; it did not produce the Gasio trial transcript.

Source: Orange County Superior Court records purchase confirmation #01373P, dated April 24, 2026; Harman v. Tran certified ROA filings #2, #5, and #34.

Governing statutory provisions