Court Opinion

ID: 9631529
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 10:41:16.638817+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:56.137403
License: Public Domain

WERDEGAR, J., Concurring and Dissenting.
I concur fully in the majority’s result and reasoning, with a single exception: I dissent from footnote 18 of the majority opinion, which states, apparently for the guidance of the trial court on remand, that “under [Civil Code] section 847 plaintiff may not contest involvement in an attempted grand theft and may not litigate the facts behind his nolo contendere plea to avoid triggering the statute’s application.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 736, fn. 18.) I disagree because, under well-settled California law, a conviction by plea of guilty or no contest does not preclude the convicted person from relitigating issues of guilty conduct or intent in a subsequent civil trial, although the plea, whether guilty or no contest, is relevant and admissible against the convicted felon to show his or her factual guilt. (Pen. Code, § 1016; Evid. Code, § 1300; Teitlebaum Furs, Inc. v. Dominion Ins. Co. Ltd. (1962) 58 Cal.2d 601, 605-606 [25 Cal.Rptr. *738559, 375 P.2d 439]; People v. Goodrum (1991) 228 Cal.App.3d 397, 402-403 [279 Cal.Rptr. 120]; Arenstein v. California State Bd. of Pharmacy (1968) 265 Cal.App.2d 179, 190-191 [71 Cal.Rptr. 357]; see also 7 Witkin, Cal. Procedure (4th ed. 1997) Judgment, § 332(3), pp. 885-886.) Nothing in Civil Code section 847 abrogates or creates an exception to this established principle of California law.
In a long line of cases, stretching back at least to Fawkes v. Reynolds (1922) 190 Cal. 204 [211 P. 449], California courts have held convictions by plea are not conclusive, in a later civil action, of the convicted person’s factual guilt. The facts necessarily admitted by the plea—:the elements of the crime—may be relitigated, and the convicted person’s plea explained as entered for reasons other than guilt.
In Fawkes, a dispute over irrigation rights had led to a fistfight. The civil defendant, Reynolds, had pleaded guilty, in a criminal prosecution, to assault and battery on the plaintiff, Fawkes. Despite the plea, Reynolds was not precluded from claiming, in defense of the civil suit, that he had used force in justified defense of his property rights. The civil jury, we held, was properly instructed that Reynolds’s guilty plea “ ‘is not to be taken by you as being conclusive that the defendant was guilty of the crime of assault and battery against the plaintiff. This plea of guilty should only be regarded by you as an admission on the part of the defendant . . . .’” (190 Cal. at p. 213.)
The basic rationale for distinguishing convictions by plea from convictions after trial, which do have issue preclusion (collateral estoppel) effect in later civil trials, was explained by Justice Traynor for a virtually unanimous court (one justice concurred in the judgment without separate opinion) in Teitlebaum Furs, Inc. v. Dominion Ins. Co. Ltd., supra, 58 Cal.2d at pages 605-606 (Teitlebaum Furs): “A plea of guilty is admissible in a subsequent civil action on the independent ground that it is an admission. It would not serve the policy underlying collateral estoppel, however, to make such a plea conclusive. ‘The rule [of collateral estoppel] is based upon the sound public policy of limiting litigation by preventing a party who has had one fair trial on an issue from again drawing it into controversy.’ [Citation.] ‘This policy must be considered together with the policy that a party shall not be deprived of a fair adversary proceeding in which fully to present his case.’ [Citation.] When a plea of guilty has been entered in the prior action, no issues have been ‘drawn into controversy’ by a ‘full presentation’ of the case. It may reflect only a compromise or a belief that paying a fine is more advantageous than litigation. Considerations of fairness to civil litigants and regard for the expeditious administration of criminal justice [citation] combine to prohibit *739the application of collateral estoppel against a party who, having pleaded guilty to a criminal charge, seeks for the first time to litigate his cause in a civil action.”1
The rule in Teitlebaum Furs “permits a party in a subsequent civil action to contest the truth of the matters admitted by his plea of guilty, present all facts surrounding the same including the nature of the charge and the plea, and explain why he entered such plea.” (Arenstein v. California State Bd. of Pharmacy, supra, 265 Cal.App.2d at p. 191.) The Courts of Appeal have reiterated the rule on several occasions since and have applied it in a variety of circumstances, prohibiting the defensive as well as offensive use of collateral estoppel, and involving no contest as well as guilty pleas. (See, e.g., County of Los Angeles v. Civil Service Com. (1995) 39 Cal.App.4th 620, 629, fn. 8 [46 Cal.Rptr.2d 256] [stating rule as applicable to no contest plea]; People v. Goodrum, supra, 228 Cal.App.3d at pp. 401-402 [stating that defendant who pled no contest pursuant to plea bargain, and was misadvised as to collateral consequences of such a plea, would be permitted to explain in later civil action that his plea was not intended as an admission of guilt]; Pease v. Pease (1988) 201 Cal.App.3d 29, 32-34 [246 Cal.Rptr. 762] [applying Teitlebaum Furs rule to prevent even defensive use of collateral estoppel against convicted person; convicted person could maintain action on a cross-complaint despite prior plea’s adverse determination of issues raised by cross-complaint]; Arenstein v. California State Bd. of Pharmacy, supra, 265 Cal.App.2d at p. 191 [holding superior court, in review of administrative license suspension proceeding, properly considered licensees’ prior guilty pleas as evidentiary admissions only].)2 On full reexamination, after open and reasoned debate, we might possibly decide to overturn this *740long-standing rule of California law. We should certainly not do so sub silentio and without any stated reason.
The majority does not explicitly overrule the Teitlebaum Furs rule; indeed, the opinion does not even mention it. The majority purports, rather, to state a special rule for purposes of Civil Code section 847 (hereafter section 847), supported by the “language and history” of that statute. (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 736, fn. 18.) As to the statutory language, the majority points only to subdivision (e) of section 847, which provides: “The limitation on liability conferred by this section arises only upon the charge of a felony listed in subdivision (b) and the subsequent conviction of that felony or a lesser included felony or misdemeanor . . . .” (Italics added.) This provision, however, does not assist the majority, for, while it clearly makes a conviction necessary to application of section 847, it says nothing as to whether such a conviction is sufficient to establish the statutory immunity; nor does subdivision (e) speak to whether a conviction by guilty or no contest plea is conclusive of facts impliedly admitted by the plea. As we have just seen, our prior decisions definitively hold a guilty or no contest plea is not conclusive, in a later civil trial, of factual guilt. Nor can subdivision (e) be read to make a conviction, whether by plea or verdict, sufficient in itself to invoke civil immunity, since other provisions of the statute require, in addition to a conviction, a determination that the injury sued upon occurred during or after the commission of the felony and while the criminal was still on the defendant’s property (§ 847, subds. (a), (c)), and a determination that the criminal conduct caused the injury sued upon {id., subd. (d)).
As to legislative history, I believe the majority places more weight thereon than it will legitimately bear. With regard to the requirement, in subdivision (e) of section 847, of an existing conviction, the report cited by the majority notes only that the provision would serve “to verify that a felony was actually committed,” and that the conviction requirement “eliminates some of the problems perceived in its earlier version that attempted to resolve a criminal issue in a civil action by the standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.” (Assem. Com. on Judiciary, Analysis of Assem. Bill No. 200 (1985-1986 Reg. Sess.) as amended May 30, 1985, p. 3.) With regard to *741guilty pleas, the cited Senate report noted, in the course of contrasting Assembly Bill No. 200, the bill that became section 847, with a competing bill (which excluded misdemeanor convictions), that under Assembly Bill No. 200 “a person charged with burglary but convicted of misdemeanor trespass would be barred from civil recovery. Proponents assert that this provision is necessary to accommodate cases where the defendant pleads to a lesser offense or is convicted of a lesser included offense.” (Sen. Com. on Judiciary, Analysis of Assem. Bill No. 200 (1985-1986 Reg. Sess.) as amended July 8, 1985, p. 5.) The cited Assembly report observes merely that “[t]he bill also accommodates those cases in which a felony charge is reduced to a lesser offense by plea-bargaining and a conviction is subsequently obtained.” (Assem. 3d reading analysis of Assem. Bill No. 200 (1985-1986 Reg. Sess.) as amended May 30, 1985, p. 3.)
To my reading, these comments in staff reports fall far short of stating, or even implying, that the existence of a prior conviction, obtained by a plea of guilty or no contest, would legally preclude the convicted person from explaining his or her plea or from denying, in order to avoid application of section 847, that he or she committed the crime to which he or she pled. Of course, relitigation of guilt issues is precluded when the conviction was the result of a trial (see Teitlebaum Furs, supra, 58 Cal.2d at pp. 603-605), and legislators may have assumed, for that reason, that by requiring an existing conviction for application of section 847 they would in most cases avoid relitigation of guilt. To the extent any members also assumed that relitigation of guilt would be precluded even when the prior conviction was by plea—a premise I do not find particularly reflected in the cited legislative reports—their assumption was unwarranted, for they neglected to enact any provision so stating, and the general law of California is, as discussed earlier, to the contrary.
In interpreting a statute, our role “is simply to ascertain and declare what is in terms or in substance contained therein, not to insert what has been omitted, or to omit what has been inserted.” (Code Civ. Proc., § 1858.) A provision precluding relitigation of factual guilt after conviction on the basis of a guilty or no contest plea would, no doubt, likely contribute somewhat to the pretrial disposition of civil suits by injured criminals, a result in accord with the overall spirit of section 847. The Legislature, however, did not enact such a provision. Unless we are to overrule a long and well-reasoned line of decisions from this court and the Courts of Appeal, we can find no such preclusion as a matter of collateral estoppel.
For these reasons, I dissent from the judgment insofar as it precludes plaintiff, on remand, from litigating the facts behind, or the reasons for, his *742plea of nolo contendere to attempted grand theft. In all other respects, I concur.
Appellants’ petition for a rehearing was denied February 17, 1999. Kennard, J., was of the opinion that the petition should be granted.

 Justice Traynor refers only to pleas of guilty because prior to 1963 the plea of nolo contendere was not authorized by California statute. (4 Witkin & Epstein, Cal. Criminal Law (2d ed. 1989) Proceedings Before Trial, § 2133, p. 2502.) From 1963 to 1982, pleas of nolo contendere were recognized but, unlike pleas of guilty, they could not be used against the convicted person as admissions in a later civil action. (Historical Note, 50A West’s Ann. Pen. Code (1985 ed.) foll. § 1016, p. 487; Historical Note, 29B pt. 4 West’s Ann. Evid. Code (1995 ed.) foll. § 1300, p. 397.) In 1982, Penal Code section 1016 and Evidence Code section 1300 were amended to place felony nolo contendere pleas on an equal footing with guilty pleas. (Stats. 1982, ch. 390, §§ 2, 3, pp. 1724-1725.) Penal Code section 1016 now provides that the “legal effect of such a plea, to a crime punishable as a felony, shall be the same as that of a plea of guilty for all purposes.” Nolo contendere pleas to crimes less than felonies remain, under Penal Code section 1016, unavailable for use as admissions in subsequent civil suits.

 California is far from unique in denying issue preclusion effect in later civil trials to convictions by plea. A Restatement comment opines that a conviction based on a guilty or no contest plea does not create issue preclusion “because the issue has not actually been litigated” (Rest.2d Judgments, § 85, com. b, p. 296), although the comment also suggests a guilty plea may create some other unspecified type of estoppel under “the law of evidence” (ibid.). Although courts in other jurisdictions are by no means unanimous, Teitlebaum Furs *740appears to represent the majority rule. (See Aetna Cas. & Sur. Co. v. Niziolek (1985) 395 Mass. 737 [481 N.E.2d 1356, 1363] [citing 39 states, in addition to Massachusetts, in which “a plea of guilty is admissible in evidence as an admission in subsequent civil litigation, but is not conclusive”]; State Farm Fire and Cas. Co. v. Fullerton (5th Cir. 1997) 118 F.3d 374, 378-381 [citing and discussing cases on both sides of the issue].) The Teitlebaum Furs approach has also been carefully examined and persuasively defended from a scholarly perspective. (See Shapiro, Should a Guilty Plea Have Preclusive Effect? (1984) 70 Iowa L.Rev. 27.)