Removal from the Vexatious Litigant List

Pursuant to CCP § 391.8, a vexatious litigant subject to a pre-filing order under CCP § 391.7 may file an application to vacate the pre-filing order and remove his or her name from the Judicial Council’s list of vexatious litigants subject to pre-filing orders. (CCP § 391.8(a).)

Factor for Removal: Material Change in the Facts

The pre-filing order may be vacated and removal of a vexatious litigant’s name from the Judicial Council’s list of vexatious litigants be ordered only upon a showing of a material change in the facts upon which the order was granted and that the ends of justice would be served by vacating the order. (CCP § 391.8(c).)

Evidence

While a vexatious litigant determination may be erasable, erasure requires substantial evidence that the vexatious litigant has mended his ways or conduct. (Luckett v. Panos (2008) 161 Cal. App. 4th 77, 83 (noting a “decent interval-certainly no less than four years” would be a sufficient passing of time for the litigant in that case to seek to have a prefiling order lifted after his unsuccessful appeal).)

Substantial evidence that bears on whether a vexatious litigant has mended his ways is not some success in litigation, but evidence that he has given up suing people as a way of life. (Id. at 93-94.) Such evidence includes proof of a propensity for honesty, of efforts at obtaining gainful employment, of genuine remorse for the costs of litigation inflicted on the defendants who were the object of previous lawsuits, and of some genuine effort at restitution toward the previous victims of his litigation, including actual payment of cost orders made by the courts in prior litigation. (Ibid.)

In seeking to vacate a prefiling order, the litigant cannot challenge the propriety of the court’s imposition of that prefiling order. (In re Marriage of Rifkin and Carty (2015) 234 Cal. App. 4th 1339, 1347.)

See also Motion to Declare Plaintiff a Vexatious Litigant.