Court Opinion

ID: 9723565
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 10:20:29.564172+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:49.790131
License: Public Domain

DANIELSON, J.
I fully concur in the above opinion, but submit this additional opinion in order to express the following thoughts, which need to be expressed.
If the allegations in the complaint are true the respondent manufactured false evidence which was used to compel the payment of an excessive settlement by the appellant in the underlying dissolution action. The false evidence was used first during the settlement phase of the action, and again during the trial.
If the allegations are true the respondent testified that “he had made an appraisal of [appellant’s] anesthesiology practice based upon an examination of the practice and a comparison of the evaluation of the goodwill of the practice to that of three other comparable anesthesiology medical practices.”
The respondent could not have conducted such an examination and comparison because, in fact, (1) the three other purported anesthesiologists with purportedly comparable practices did not even exist in the State of Cali*917fomia, and (2) appellant’s practice had no goodwill since he practiced as a staff member in a rotation group and had no patients of his own.
Our opinion in this case, in which I join under the compulsion of stare decisis and the decision in Auto Equity Sales, Inc. v. Superior Court (1962) 57 Cal.2d 450, 455 [20 Cal.Rptr. 321, 369 P.2d 937], is based upon the holding of our Supreme Court in the case of Taylor v. Bidwell (1884) 65 Cal. 489, 490 [4 P. 491] (see page 915, ante). Taylor v. Bidwell should be re-examined by our Supreme Court, or Civil Code section 47, subdivision 2 should be reviewed by our Legislature, the policy-making branch of our government. Taylor holds that perjury, and the suborning of peijury, in a criminal proceeding do not constitute a cause of action for damages by the person injured, and that principle has been carried forward to countenance the same malconduct in civil proceedings.
Taylor predicates its holding on its statement that “however just and reasonable it may appear, upon the first view of the proposition, that a man who has by peijury injured another, should be answerable, yet, on a nearer inspection, when the mischiefs resulting from upholding that proposition are considered, the conclusion must be that it would be dangerous in the extreme to sustain the action.’’ (Id., at p. 490.)
Taylor does not identify the dread “mischiefs” and dangers which would result from holding a peijuring witness or his suborner accountable in a civil action. Just what they are is limited only by the unlimited imaginations of those with less faith than I that our judicial system can survive the burdens of compelling truth in testimony.
To leave matters where they are is to bar a civil action for damages by one who has been injured by peijury and false evidence. Such evidence is a fraud upon the courts, the litigants and the People of our state. It subverts the administration of justice. It should not be countenanced.
A petition for a rehearing was denied April 20,1987, and appellant’s petition for review by the Supreme Court was denied June 17, 1987.