The tort of "Trespass to Chattel," by itself, does not support a UCL violation

I just wanted to write “trespass to chattel,” so this case gets a post just for that. In Pneuma International, Inc. v. Cho (June 24, 2019), the Court of Appeal (First Appellate District, Division One) was asked to review an assortment of complaints about the outcome of a trial. One issue was whether the failure to transfer ownership of a domain, the “trespass to chattel” that was at issue, constituted a fraudulent or unfair practice under the UCL. While Pneuma argued that the UCL’s “unlawful” prong is construed broadly, so there should be no resistance to borrowing the tort to serve as the predicate violation, the Court was not persuaded. After noting the dearth of authority on that particular tort, the Court said:

Although not directly relevant to whether Pneuma may “borrow” a tort as a basis for a UCL cause of action, respondents correctly observe that Pneuma may not recover damages under a UCL cause of action because remedies under the act are purely equitable in nature. (E.g., Korea Supply Co. v. Lockheed Martin Corp. (2003) 29 Cal.4th 1134, 1150-1151 [remedies provided under UCL “are limited” and “it is well established that individuals may not recover damages”].) Pneuma does not identify what additional relief it would be entitled to if it prevailed on its UCL cause of action. The trial court already ordered the equitable relief of transferring the egpak.com website to Pneuma after it prevailed on a cause of action for trespass to chattel.

Slip op., at 15. So, does this mean that, where the UCL could supply some additional relief, a common law tort could serve as a predicate violation of the UCL? More realistically, can you even concoct a scenario where it would make sense to say that a common law tort constituted the predicate violation?