Court Opinion

ID: 9544860
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:02:34.370552+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:13:43.231068
License: Public Domain

KAUS, J.
I respectfully dissent.
I do not reach the issues discussed in parts II and m of the majority opinion since I disagree profoundly that under the particular circumstances of this case and the settlement agreement before us, it was proper to award plaintiffs fees or costs.
*688The question is not, as the majority states at the outset, whether an agreement silent as to costs and fees creates a bar to either a cost bill or a motion for fees pursuant to section 1021.5 of the Code of Civil Procedure. Possibly it does not, but that is not this case. Here both the original as well as the amended complaint included specific prayers for costs and attorney fees. The settlement agreement specifically recited: “Plaintiffs shall file with the Court a dismissal of Local Defendants with prejudice, within one week of the date that the last new transit system has initiated service as defined in ^[10 below.” As I understand it, nothing but the necessary delay in establishing the transit systems called for by the agreement prevented the immediate filing of the dismissal with prejudice—nor do plaintiffs claim otherwise. Can there be any question that once such a dismissal had been filed, it would have been curtains for any effort to trigger an encore in the form of fees and costs? (Kronkright v. Gardner (1973) 31 Cal.App.3d 214, 219 [107 Cal.Rptr. 270]; Wouldridge v. Burns (1968) 265 Cal.App.2d 82, 84-85 [71 Cal.Rptr. 394]; Ghiringhelli v. Riboni (1950) 95 Cal.App.2d 503, 506 [213 P.2d 17].) The result cannot be different just because plaintiffs went into court before the dismissal was filed, without in any way disavowing it or offering extrinsic evidence to alter its plain meaning.
Having no wish to burden posterity with a tedious dissent, I shall simply state that none of the authorities cited by plaintiffs is precisely in point, in that none involves a specific prayer for costs and fees in the complaint and a specific promise to dismiss that complaint with prejudice. Particularly inappropriate is the majority’s heavy reliance on Rappenecker v. Sea-Land Service Inc. (1979) 93 Cal.App.3d 256 [155 Cal.Rptr. 516]. That case involved the propriety of allowing costs after the plaintiffs’ acceptance of an offer pursuant to section 998 of the Code of Civil Procedure by defendant to allow judgment in a certain sum to be taken. Later plaintiffs filed cost bills which defendant sought to strike. The Court of Appeal quite properly held that there was nothing in the section 998 procedure which, if followed, leads to a judgment, that would negative the normal consequences of a judgment for the plaintiffs as far as costs were concerned. The obvious distinction between Rappenecker and this case needs no elaboration; a favorable judgment invites the filing of a cost bill; a dismissal with prejudice forbids it.
Richardson, J., concurred.