Estate of Kempton

I. INTRODUCTION

Charles Kinney, an adjudicated vexatious litigant and disbarred former attorney, obtained leave from our Administrative Presiding Justice to pursue an appeal from the final judgment in this probate proceeding. Leave was granted not because Kinney made the necessary threshold showing of merit and absence of intent to harass or delay under Code of Civil Procedure section 391.7, but because the vexatious litigant statute has no application to a party who files an appeal in a proceeding he did not initiate. (John v. Superior Court (2016) 63 Cal.4th 91, 99.) Kinney appeals the probate court’s “Order Settling First and Final Account and Directing Final Distribution; [and] Allowing Statutory and

1 Extraordinary Fees[]” (the Final Distribution and Allowance of Fees Order). Although Kinney’s arguments on appeal are difficult to distill in a coherent way, he appears to claim, chiefly, that the probate court erred in approving Special Administrator Phillip Campbell’s (1) decision not to pay him his $1,000 statutory fee, (2) cancellation of an agreement with Judith K., a prior administrator of the estate, to manage and perform various services relating to a house in San…