Court Opinion

ID: 9731044
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 15:31:30.689026+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:12.499314
License: Public Domain

FRIEDMAN, Acting P. J.
I concur. The trial court’s order can be sustained only by a complete abdication of appellate responsibility. The trial court’s action must have been premised upon the court’s acceptance of Mr. Rowe’s statement that Mr. Bimey had agreed to waive the five-year dismissál statute. Mr. Rowe’s statement is absolutely inacceptable. It postulates a waiver as one made in exchange for plaintiff’s dropping a trial date after only 19 months of the 5-year period had run. It ascribes to defense counsel, as a quid pro quo, an unqualified waiver of the five-year dismissal statute, a theoretical consent to trial eight, ten or twenty years later. The veiy terms of the stipulation confirm the position of defense counsel—they were waiving only the two-year and not the five-year statute.
This is one of those rare cases where the trial court’s action exceeds the bounds of reason. It is too bad that this appeal comes to us after a $100,000 verdict. We must view the issue as though the trial had not taken place. The trial court’s grant of the section 473 motion was a clear abuse of discretion.
A petition for a rehearing was denied April 15, 1977, and respondent’s petition for a hearing by the Supreme Court was denied June 2, 1977. Richardson, J., did not participate therein.