First District, Division 1 Confronts Novel Procedural Circumstance in Unpublished Opinion.
Our intermediate California appellate courts confront some very interesting cases in which two statutory schemes collide in unusual procedural settings. The next one involves a collision between Code of Civil Procedure section 998 (California’s pretrial offer of judgment statute) and Code of Civil Procedure section 437c (California’s summary judgment/adjudication statute). To see which one won out, stay tuned for a little bit more.
Anderson v. Eleventh & Folsom Preservation and Community Centers, Inc., Case No. A123908 (1st Dist., Div. 1 Mar. 11, 2010) (unpublished) involved an inadequate security premises liability case where, after a jury was unable to reach a verdict, a trial court subsequently granted summary judgment against plaintiff. However, plaintiff accepted a defense 998 offer of $100,001 on the day summary judgment was granted, but the lower court did not enter judgment based on the acceptance of the offer. Among other things on appeal, plaintiff claimed that his 998 offer acceptance created a valid compromise.
Although section 998 itself provided no express guidance for the appellate court, it attempted to read section 998 together with section 437c, giving effect to both provisions when possible. The appellate verdict on this issue? “We conclude that these principles are best served by a determination that the disposition of a case on summary judgment terminates plaintiff’s power of acceptance under section 998. To hold otherwise would defeat the purpose of the statute and encourage the sort of gamesmanship apparent in this case.” (Slip Opn., p. 17.) Here is the policy-based rationale used by the Court of Appeal in reaching its result: “Allowing the use of section 998 to ‘trump’
a prior disposition on the merits, as plaintiff seeks to do here, would nullify section 437c, giving pointless effect to one provision at the expense of the other. We do not believe the Legislature intended section 998 to revive a case the trial court has deemed meritless, so that the losing party can force the other to compromise it instead. Our holding serves the purpose of section 998, while giving equal effect to section 437c, allowing each to serve the purpose for which it was enacted.” (Slip Opn., p. 18.)
Plaintiff also argued that defendants had to expressly condition their offer so that a summary judgment grant was worded as an overt termination trigger of the pending defense offer. The appellate court disagreed, observing “[w]e question whether an offer so conditioned would have been valid in any case” and found that defendants do not have to expressly condition their offers to avoid being bound after disposition of the case.
Ironically enough, the same appellate court reversed the summary judgment grant, finding inferences drawn from the evidence raised a triable issue on whether defendants’ alleged negligence was a substantial factor in bring about the harm to plaintiff.
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