Court Opinion

ID: 9793235
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:44:49.596821+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:04:08.612020
License: Public Domain

MOSK, J.
I dissent for procedural reasons.
First, we should not have granted review of this case. The California Rules of Court give us the discretionary authority to grant review only when “it appears necessary to secure uniformity of decision or the settlement of important questions of law . . . .” (Cal. Rules of Court, rule 29(a)(1).) This case meets neither criterion. Indeed, though I concede its importance to the parties, its public significance is minimal. As the majority opinion illustrates, whatever errors of law the Court of Appeal may have committed in its unpublished opinion, there are both statutes and published case law on point. (See maj. opn., ante, pp. 1156-1157.)
Second, having granted review, we should not reach the result the majority do. This case should not be remanded to the Court of Appeal to address the remaining issues. Rather, because the remaining issues appear to be defectively presented on appeal, the Court of Appeal’s judgment should be affirmed. The case’s chronology indicates that defendants failed to meet the requirements of the appellate court.
Ordinarily a party to civil litigation may not file a printed brief on appeal longer than 40 pages. (Cal. Rules of Court, rule 15(e); cf. id., rule 37(c) [criminal cases].) Defendants moved to file an opening brief of approximately 120 typewritten pages, which they represented to be the equivalent of about 80 printed pages. The Court of Appeal accommodated defendants’ request over plaintiffs opposition.1
Defendants then filed an opening brief that, according to plaintiff, was not 80 printed pages long, but 109.2
The Court of Appeal found that brief unsatisfactory. The court ordered defendants to annotate it because “citations to the record are not included to support factual and procedural matters contained in the Argument sections, pages 40 through 108.”
*1161Thereupon defendants filed their corrected opening brief. That brief, which the record does contain, is 119 pages long. It is densely composed in what appears to be a 12-point times roman font on 14-point lines.
Remarkably, despite the new briefs density and length, the Court of Appeal found that it still failed to include sufficient references to the record. The court’s irritation turned to wrath. In its opinion the court declared it proper to “reduce the issues we must address in this appeal” because of “defendants’ near-total failure to demonstrate that the issues asserted on appeal first were raised by defendants in the trial court. In other words, because the ‘party challenging a judgment has the burden of showing reversible error by an adequate record’ [citation] defendants’ claims of error must include appropriate citations to the record showing where the purported error occurred, and if appropriate, that defendants objected to that error in the proceeding below. Defendants, by failing in their opening and reply briefs to provide anything other than cursory citations to the joint appendix in lieu of clerk’s transcript or to the reporter’s transcript, have failed, almost without exception, to demonstrate [that] error occurred in the trial court. In failing adequately to cite the record, defendants either misperceive the function of appellate review [footnote omitted] or would have us assume the purported error was raised somewhere in the trial court and can be found by reviewing the voluminous joint appendix and reporter’s transcript. . . .
“Defendants’ oversight would be troublesome in a case which involved only a relatively small trial court record. The record, here, however, is formidable .... Assuming defendants were aware of their burden on appeal to demonstrate that defendants complained of the purported error in the trial court, we can only interpret defendants’ failure to include appropriate citations to the record as an implicit invitation to this court to ferret out the error ourselves. We decline defendants’ invitation.”
The Court of Appeal was correct. “An appellate court is not required to search the record to determine whether or not [it] supports appellants’ claim of error. It is the duty of counsel to refer the reviewing court to the portions of the record which support appellants’ position.” (Green v. City of Los Angeles (1974) 40 Cal.App.3d 819, 835 [115 Cal.Rptr. 685]; see Cal..Rules of Court, rule 15(a).)
Like the majority, I believe the Court of Appeal is entitled on remand to resolve the remaining issues on procedural grounds to the extent the law permits.
Specifically: if defendants did not raise claims of instructional error in the trial court those claims may be waived, depending on whether the asserted *1162error was one of law and plain on the instruction’s face, or rather one of omission (i.e., incompleteness) or excessive generality. (Mock v. Michigan Millers Mutual Ins. Co. (1992) 4 Cal.App.4th 306, 333-334 [5 Cal.Rptr.2d 594], quoting Agarwal v. Johnson (1979) 25 Cal.3d 932, 948-949 [160 Cal.Rptr. 141, 603 P.2d 58]; Weller v. American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. (1991) 232 Cal.App.3d 991, 1010 [283 Cal.Rptr. 644].) In the case of a purported omission, die claim of instructional error is not preserved for appeal unless defendants can show they offered and were refused an alternative instruction that would have cured the asserted defect. (See Weller v. American Broadcasting Companies, Inc., supra, 232 Cal.App.3d at p. 1010.)
And if defendants did not raise objections to evidentiary rulings on the grounds urged on appeal as constituting the basis for error, they have waived those claims. “Failure to make a timely objection or motion to strike inadmissible evidence constitutes a waiver of the right to later complain of its erroneous admission .... [Citation.] Parties also waive the right to later contest the admissibility of evidence where counsel fails to state the specific, correct ground or grounds supporting the objection. [Citation.]” (Mosesian v. Pennwalt Corp. (1987) 191 Cal.App.3d 851, 865 [236 Cal.Rptr. 778].)
Given the foregoing rules, I believe it elementary that defendants were required to explain where in the record they made their objections or, in the case of a plainly erroneous instruction, where the record shows that the error complained of was plain and not one of omission under the facts of the case. (See Ballard v. Uribe (1986) 41 Cal.3d 564, 574 [224 Cal.Rptr. 664, 715 P.2d 624] [plur. opn.].) The Court of Appeal is not required on remand to resolve these remaining issues on the merits if to do so means it must scour through this case’s voluminous record to locate the relevant proceedings itself. (Green v. City of Los Angeles, supra, 40 Cal.App.3d 819, 835.)
I decline to finely ¡parse defendants’ 119-page densely printed corrected opening brief or their similarly formatted 40-page reply brief in the Court of Appeal to discover the full extent to which they did or did not support their claims of error with adequate references to the record. I believe the Court of Appeal’s determination that defendants’ briefing was inadequate, even after the court accommodated them by permitting corrections, deserves our deference.
Accordingly, I cannot sign the majority opinion. My decision not to do so should not be interpreted as a reflection on the merits of the majority opinion’s general discussion of the relevance on appeal of special findings on damages. (Maj. opn., ante, pp. 1156-1157.) I merely object to the *1163application of those principles, correct or not, to a case with the procedural posture of this one. We should dispose of the case in plaintiffs favor on procedural grounds.
On April 28, 1993, the opinion was modified to read as printed above.

Plaintiff correctly observed that “it is harder to write a shorter brief than ... a longer brief” but that, absent the court rules’ limits on the length of briefs “the court would be burdened with briefs [that are] lengthy, repetitive and contain unnecessary verbiage.”

I rely on plaintiff’s description of the length of defendants’ original opening brief, because for reasons that will appear, the record on appeal does not contain it.
In a request for modification, defendants now declare they obtained by telephone the court clerk’s permission to file a brief of this size.