Court Opinion

ID: 9751637
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 16:41:28.279405+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:53.128344
License: Public Domain

ANDERSON, P. J.
I respectfully dissent. Industrial Indemnity promptly filed its complaint in intervention in the same month plaintiff filed his original complaint. Wells Fargo, however, waited until just four days before the original trial date to attempt intervention. The trial court, in denying Wells Fargo’s motion as untimely, obviously construed the words “upon timely application” of Code of Civil Procedure1 section 387 as a limitation upon Wells Fargo’s otherwise unconditional right to intervene pursuant to Labor Code section 3853.1 believe both legislative history and established case law support that construction.
To begin with, it bears emphasis that the statutory phrase “upon timely application” became a part of section 387 by amendment in 1977. (Stats. 1977, ch. 450, § 1.) Prior to 1977, section 387 provided that “any time before trial” a person who has an interest in the matter in litigation may intervene in the action. Regardless of the exact wording of the section, timeliness has always been held one of the prerequisites for granting an application to intervene. (Allen v. California Water & Tel. Co. (1947) 31 Cal.2d 104, 108 [187 P.2d 393]; Northern Cal. Psychiatric Society v. City of Berkeley (1986) 178 Cal.App.3d 90, 109 [223 Cal.Rptr. 609].) By requiring all applications in intervention to be timely, section 387 is consistent with rule 24(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure after which it was patterned. Under the federal rule and case law “[w]hether intervention be claimed of right or as permissive, ... the application must be ‘timely.’ If it is untimely, intervention must be denied. Thus, the court where the action is pending must first be satisfied as to timeliness. . . .” (NAACP v. New York (1973) 413 U.S. 345, 365 [37 L.Ed.2d 648, 662, 93 S.Ct. 2591], fn. omitted.)
Moreover, the phrase “any time before trial” in former section 387 has been interpreted in Sanders v. Pacific Gas & Elec. Co. (1975) 53 Cal.App.3d *1787661 [126 Cal.Rptr. 415]. Rather than giving a literal meaning to the phrase (which is identical with the verbiage used in Lab. Code, § 3853), Sanders held that the main requirement of allowing intervention is timeliness. In its reasoning the court emphasized: “a right to intervene should be asserted within a reasonable time and that the intervener must not be guilty of an unreasonable delay after knowledge of the suit. [Citation.] The main purpose of intervention is to obviate delay and multiplicity of actions. [Citation.] . . . [A]n intervention will not be allowed when it would retard the principal suit, or require a reopening of the case for further evidence, or delay the trial of the action, or change the position of the original parties. [Citation.]” (Sanders v. Pacific Gas & Elec. Co., supra, at pp. 668-669, italics in original.)
Likewise, case law demonstrates that under Labor Code section 3853 a party does not have an absolute, unconditional right to intervene before trial. On the contrary, the right to intervene is limited by the requirement of timeliness and diligence: State Compensation Ins. Fund v. Selma Trailer & Manufacturing Co. (1989) 210 Cal.App.3d 740 [258 Cal.Rptr. 545] and Bishop v. Silva (1991) 234 Cal.App.3d 1317 [285 Cal.Rptr. 910].
In Selma the workers’ compensation carrier of the employer filed the initial action the day before the statute of limitations expired. The employee intervened almost three years later. Both the insurer and the employee effected service just before expiration of the time limit measured from the filing of the initial complaint. Almost four years and ten months after the filing of the initial complaint, defendants moved to dismiss for delay in prosecution under the three-year discretionary dismissal statute. (§§ 583.410, 583.420, subd. (a)(2)(A).) The trial court granted the motion, dismissing both the initial complaint and the complaint in intervention, the latter having been filed less than three years earlier. The intervening employee argued on appeal that his time to bring the case to trial ran from the filing of his complaint in intervention and not from the filing of the initial complaint. The Court of Appeal disagreed by taking note that “one of the purposes of intervention is to avoid delay” and that the cases have always placed emphasis “on the obligation of a person who has a litigable claim to pursue the claim with alacrity and vigor and the strong public policy in favor of expediting and disposing of litigation.” (State Compensation Ins. Fund v. Selma Trailer & Manufacturing Co., supra, 210 Cal.App.3d at p. 754.) The Selma court concluded that “the provisions of Labor Code section 3853 . . . permitting the intervener to file a complaint-in-intervention ‘at any time before the trial on the facts’ do not qualify or eliminate intervener’s obligation to pursue his claim diligently from the beginning. The strong public policy in *1788favor of expediting the prosecution of claims still prevails. It operates as a limitation on the right of the intervener to maintain the lawsuit.” (Id. at p. 755, italics added.) The Selma court finally observed that “this rule gives effect to Labor Code section 3853, authorizing a complaint-in-intervention after the statute of limitations would have otherwise run, but holds the intervener’s feet to the fire, so to speak, with respect to vigorous prosecution of his claim.” (Ibid.)
In Silva the employee initiated a lawsuit against an alleged third party tortfeasor. Pursuant to Labor Code section 3853, the employer’s workers’ compensation carrier intervened. When plaintiff’s action was dismissed for failure to effect timely service, he sought to intervene in the insurance company’s complaint in intervention, contending (as appellant does here) that he had an absolute right to do so under Labor Code section 3853. The trial court denied his motion to intervene, by adopting the holding in Selma and reiterating that “at any time before the trial” in the Labor Code does not eliminate the intervener’s duty to pursue his claim diligently; the public policy in favor of expediting the procedure operates as a limitation on the intervener to maintain the lawsuit. (Bishop v. Silva, supra, 234 Cal.App.3d at p. 1326.) The court elaborated that “an employer or employee who initiates the lawsuit . . . cannot avoid the penalty for noncompliance with the mandatory service statutes by simply intervening back into the litigation and thereby benefitting from any extended service period available to the initial intervener. H] Intervention is allowed under Labor Code section 3853 ‘at any time before trial on the facts . . .’ and even beyond the one-year statute of limitations. [Citations.] Nonetheless, we cannot believe the Legislature intended to reward an employer or employee whose action is subject to mandatory dismissal for failure to effect timely service by permitting him to intervene back into the very litigation he set in motion—at a time well after the statute of limitations has expired. We see no end to this procedural game, sometimes referred to as “leapfrog.” [Citation.] We envision the employer intervening into the employee’s suit, the dismissed employee intervening back into the employer’s suit, the dismissed employer reintervening back into the employee’s suit, and so on. We do not believe this scenario carries out the Legislature’s intent in enacting either the service statutes or Labor Code section 3853.” (Id. at p. 1327.)
Wells Fargo’s reliance on Buell v. CBS, Inc. (1982) 136 Cal.App.3d 823 [186 Cal.Rptr. 455], Jordan v. Superior Court (1981) 116 Cal.App.3d 202 [172 Cal.Rptr. 30] and Carden v. Otto (1974) 37 Cal.App.3d 887 [112 Cal.Rptr. 749] is misplaced. Buell was disapproved in Selma. (Bishop v. Silva, supra, 234 Cal.App.3d at p. 1326.) Contrary to the bank’s assertion, *1789Jordan did not hold that the intervention right granted by Labor Code section 3853 is unconditional, or at least not conditioned by the section 387 requirement of timeliness. Rather, it concluded that the words “any time before trial” in Labor Code section 3853 serve only “ ‘to control or modify the one year statute of limitations for personal injury’ ” (Jordan v. Superior Court, supra, 116 Cal.App.3d at p. 207) so as to allow intervention after the statutory period has run. Far from supporting the bank’s position, the Jordan court (at least implicitly) confirmed the proposition that Labor Code section 3853 is subject to the timeliness requirement by making a point that the attempted intervention in that case was timely (id. at pp. 208-209). Carden, supra, is also distinguishable because it was decided before the requirement of timeliness was officially incorporated into section 387 by the 1977 amendment.
The bank’s additional argument that as a matter of statutory interpretation Labor Code section 3853, as a special statute, must prevail over the general provisions of section 387 (§ 1859; Green v. Community Redevelopment Agency (1979) 96 Cal.App.3d 491 [158 Cal.Rptr. 126]) does not persuade me otherwise. Section 1859 provides that “In the construction of a statute the intention of the Legislature, and in the construction of the instrument the intention of the parties, is to be pursued, if possible; and when a general and [a] particular provision are inconsistent, the latter is paramount to the former. So a particular intent will control a general one that is inconsistent with it.” (Italics added.)
When properly harmonized (Woods v. Young (1991) 53 Cal.3d 315, 323 [279 Cal.Rptr. 613, 807 P.2d 455]), there is no inconsistency between the two disputed statutory sections and, hence, the specific versus general rule does not come into play. Labor Code section 3853 contains substantive provisions regarding intervention in third party tortfeasor actions, while section 387 prescribes the procedural safeguards as to how those rights must be exercised with due deference to the trial court’s inherent power to ensure an orderly proceeding, to manage its own caseload and to control the conduct of the parties with concern for promoting expediency and efficiency in the judicial process.
For these reasons I would hold that interveners claiming a right to intervene under Labor Code section 3853 are subject to section 387’s requirement of timeliness. Employers or employees intervening under Labor *1790Code section 3853 are granted a right to do so “at any time before trial.” I would not abridge that right, but merely condition it upon the same requirement of reasonable diligence which any party faces in litigating its claims.

Unless otherwise indicated, all further statutory references are to the Code of Civil Procedure.