Sarah R. v. Gurley CA1/5

BACKGROUND

A. In May 2020, Sarah R. filed a request for a civil harassment restraining order against Gurley. In support of her request, which she filed in propria persona, she stated Gurley was her former attorney, as well as a family acquaintance, and

Undesignated statutory references are to the Code of Civil

Procedure. 1 that he had been harassing her since April—when she expressed her dissatisfaction with his handling of her case. The court issued a temporary restraining order.

At a hearing approximately two months later, the trial court considered the following evidence:

In June 2019, Sarah retained Gurley to represent her in child custody and support proceedings. One evening in April of the following year, Sarah called Gurley after receiving an incoherent text message from him. Gurley sounded intoxicated and told Sarah that he had been kicked out of his house—because someone attacked him with a baseball bat—and then removed from three different hotels by police. Gurley expressed paranoid thoughts about “people coming after him” and told Sarah that he was now “associated” with the Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang. He said “very threatening and nasty people” would collect…