Court Opinion

ID: 9789857
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:43:01.696331+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:24.750281
License: Public Domain

CHIN, J., Concurring.
I would sign the majority opinion except that the majority decides an issue that we do not need to decide, and I am not sure it decides the issue correctly.
As the majority discusses (maj. opn., ante, at pp. 297-299), former versions of the survival statute that is now codified in Code of Civil Procedure section 377.34 barred “pain, suffering or disfigurement” damages only “[w]hen a [plaintiff] dies before judgment.” In this case, the majority correctly reads this same limitation into the current version of the statute, *310noting, among other things, that the Legislature enacted the current version intending no “substantive change.” (Maj. opn., ante, at pp. 301-302.) Defendant argues that the phrase “before judgment” in the former versions meant before final judgment following all appeals. (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 303.) The majority correctly rejects this argument, but unnecessarily goes further, construing the phrase “before judgment” to have meant before a final appealable judgment. (Maj. opn., ante, at pp. 303-305.)
To be appealable, a judgment must dispose of all causes of action between the parties. (Morehart v. County of Santa Barbara (1994) 7 Cal.4th 725, 741 [29 Cal.Rptr.2d 804, 872 P.2d 143].) But this requirement evolved in the context of regulating appeals and does not necessarily extend outside that context. As the majority points out, “[I]t has long been recognized that ‘No hard-and-fast definition of “final” judgment applicable to all situations can be given, since its finality depends somewhat upon the purpose for which and the standpoint from which it is being considered, and it may be final for one purpose and not for another. . . .’” (Maj. opn., ante, at pp. 303-304, original italics, citation omitted.) Thus, an interlocutory judgment disposing of some, but not all, causes of action is not appealable, but may be sufficient to preserve pain, suffering, or disfigurement damages that are part of that judgment. As a result of the nunc pro tunc amendment that the majority directs, the plaintiff in this case, Joseph A. Sullivan, died after a final appealable judgment. Thus, we do not need to decide the effect of a plaintiff’s death before a final appealable judgment, but after an interlocutory judgment on some causes of action.
The issue is important. Not infrequently, a plaintiff suffers from a life-threatening condition. If a jury returns a verdict in the plaintiff’s favor on some causes of action and cannot reach a verdict as to other causes of action, the plaintiff, under the majority’s dictum, will have to forfeit his unresolved, but possibly meritorious, causes of action. Otherwise, he will risk dying before a final appealable judgment, in which case his heirs will lose the pain, suffering, or disfigurement damages the jury awarded him. The plaintiff might choose to litigate the unresolved causes of action, planning, if his condition suddenly worsens, to abandon those causes and ask for a judgment. One who adopts that course, however, might die suddenly and not be able to obtain the necessary dismissal and final judgment. Thus, the majority offers a dying plaintiff a cruel Hobson’s choice, without stating any compelling policy justifying its decision.
In the context of construing the survival statute, the majority does not convince me that we should distinguish between an interlocutory judgment disposing of some causes of action and a final judgment disposing of all *311causes of action. Because the court’s statement with respect to this issue is only dictum, I encourage litigants to present the court with a case that raises the issue squarely so the court can reassess the merits of this dictum.