Court Opinion

ID: 9746083
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 13:56:40.293166+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:08.509549
License: Public Domain

EPSTEIN, P. J.
I respectfully dissent from the opinion of my colleagues that plaintiffs suit was properly dismissed for failure to bring the action to trial within five years. (Code Civ. Proc., § 583.310; all further statutory citations are to that code.)
The procedural history of the case is fully described in the majority opinion. For purposes of this discussion, it is sufficient to summarize that the plaintiff was a subcontractor to respondent, the general contractor, on three separate projects, and sued respondent for breach of contract on each of them. His suit was in three causes of action, one for each project. The litigation over one of them, the Hollywood Bowl project, was complicated by the existence of several other claims by other parties. All of the Hollywood Bowl lawsuits against respondent were consolidated for trial. Appellant’s action against respondent was bifurcated, with the cause of action based on the Hollywood Bowl project to be tried first, together with the other suits involving that project. The other two causes of action, now bifurcated from the first, were to be tried later. After trial was completed in the Hollywood Bowl litigation, appellant agreed to sever his remaining causes of action so that a final judgment could be entered on the Hollywood Bowl job, and that was done.
If the period for appellant to get his case to trial is measured from when it filed its lawsuit until the beginning of trial on the Hollywood Bowl phase of the case, the five-year period was not exceeded. (The time was tolled while the matter was in a court-ordered reference.) But if trial of its lawsuit did not begin upon commencement of trial of the Hollywood Bowl cause of action, the action is indeed barred. That was the view taken by the trial court, which granted respondent’s motion to dismiss.
Neither side has cited a case on all fours with this issue. My colleagues distinguish cases that are factually close, In re Marriage of MacFarlane and Lang (1992) 8 Cal.App.4th 247 [10 Cal.Rptr.2d 157], and Patapoffv. City of Los Angeles (1959) 171 Cal.App.2d 635 [342 P.2d 428], Each involved bifurcation. The distinction is that, for each, some aspect of the issue tried first bore on the remaining aspects of the case, a circumstance not present here.
The key provision is section 583.360, which, in its first subdivision, provides that “An action shall be dismissed ... if the action is not brought to *452trial within the time prescribed in this article,” referring to the speedy trial provisions. “Action” is not defined in the article. (Cf. § 30, which provides that a “civil action is prosecuted by one party against another for the declaration, enforcement or protection of a right, or the redress or prevention of a wrong.”)
The question comes down to whether, when a party files a lawsuit comprised of several causes of action, unrelated except that they are against the same defendant, the “action” is the lawsuit, or whether there are several “actions.” The common sense meaning of the term is that a plaintiff’s “action” is its lawsuit, not each of the component parts of the suit. No authority to the contrary is cited. In this case, there was one lawsuit and hence one “action,” regardless of the number of causes of action included in the suit. The causes of action were bifurcated, but they were not severed until after the Hollywood Bowl phase. Bifurcation is not severance. Thus, appellant’s “action” was brought to trial when the cause of action selected to be tried first came to trial.
Were this not the case, operation of the five-year statute would depend on fine distinctions whether the cause of action first tried had some impact on those not yet tried. If it did, but only then, all would be considered to have been brought to trial within the five-year period. Otherwise, except for tolling because of impracticality or impossibility to bring the other causes of action to trial until trial of the first was completed (see § 583.340, subd. (c)), the time would run. That is a regime rife with opportunities for mischief, and one which would discourage counsel and courts from managing cases such as this by bifurcation.
The majority suggest that if appellant’s case came to trial when trial commenced on its first cause of action, there would be no limitation for the other causes of action, so the case could drag on indefinitely if it were appellant’s desire to delay it. But if a plaintiff is not diligent in bringing its other causes of action to trial after one of them has been tried, the defendant’s remedy is to move for dismissal under the diligent prosecution statute, section 583.130. Dismissal could follow if the trial court is convinced that the plaintiff indeed failed to act with reasonable diligence in bringing its case to trial.
*453For these reasons, I would reverse the judgment (order of dismissal), without prejudice to the right of respondent to move for dismissal under section 583.130.
On November 10, 2004, the opinion was modified to read as printed above.