Royals

Discussion.

1 The primary question raised by the appeal, presented as a matter of first impression, is whether the prospect of punitive recovery on a financial elder abuse claim—in the form of exemplary damages or statutory penalties—may be secured by the extraordinary remedy of pretrial attachment. In the published portion of this opinion, we answer that question no. A financial elder abuse claimant may obtain an attachment for potential compensatory damages and an award of attorney fees and costs associated with those damages, but only if the request for it complies with all applicable provisions of the statutory scheme governing pretrial attachments (the Attachment Law) (Code Civ. Proc., § 481.010 et. seq.). We conclude that Royals’s attachment application did not comply with four provisions of the Attachment Law, namely that an attachment request (i) must be supported by competent evidence (id., § 482.040), (ii) must rest on an attachable “amount” (id., § 484.020, subd. (b)), (iii) must be based on a claim “upon which an attachment may be issued” (id., § 484.020, subd. (a)), and (iv) must be measured by the defendant’s claimed “indebtedness” to the plaintiff (id., § 483.015,…