Court Opinion

ID: 9729694
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 14:46:32.321847+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:00.560078
License: Public Domain

JOHNSON, J.
I respectfully dissent. To my mind, the opinion Justice Thompson authored in Barna v. Passage 350 Canon (1986) 186 Cal.App.3d 440 [230 Cal.Rptr. 764] was the correct decision and, along with Moran v. Superior Court (1983) 35 Cal.3d 229 [197 Cal.Rptr. 546, 673 P.2d 216], compels denial of this petition. Indeed, I think Barna represents the only responsible reading of the Supreme Court’s opinion in Moran.
Lest we forget what the Supreme Court actually said in Moran, consider the following direct quotes which have not been filtered through the distorting prism of the Santa Monica Hospital Medical Center v. Superior Court ((1988) 203 Cal.App.3d 1026 [250 Cal.Rptr. 384]) opinion.
“The language of the arbitration statute . . . provides that, after the arbitrator’s decision has been filed, a party who is not satisfied with the award must initiate the process which will bring the case to trial by making a timely request for a trial de novo. Once such a request has been made, this section requires that a case be calendared for trial in the order of priority it held before arbitration. Since the trial court alone has the power to order a matter placed upon its trial calendar, [Code of Civil Procedure] section 1141.20 imposes a duty upon the court sua sponte to recalendar the trial ‘in the same place ... it had prior to arbitration.’ [Italics in original, fn. omitted.] In compliance with this statutory mandate, and in order to ensure that the plaintiff will retain the benefit of the amount of time remaining in the five-year period when the case went into arbitration, that period will *1538remain tolled until the new trial date set by the court. [([] . . .[Plaintiff] had a right to assume that the court would perform its duty so that her new trial date would stand in the same relation to the end of the five-year period as did her original trial date. [][]... The time between the date the arbitration award is filed with the court and the date set for the new trial is to be excluded from calculation of the five-year period of section 583 [, subdivision] (b). . . . [1J] The trial court properly refused to dismiss [plaintiff’s] action for two independent reasons. First, [plaintiff] had pursued her action with reasonable diligence .... Second, dismissal of [plaintiff’s] action was premature because the time from the filing of the arbitration award until the new trial date . . . should have been excluded in calculating the five-year limit.” (Moran v. Superior Court, supra, 35 Cal.3d at pp. 240-242, italics added.)
This language admits of no exceptions. The Supreme Court held the plaintiff discharges his duty when he makes “a timely request for a trial de novo.” That is the only due diligence the Supreme Court requires of plaintiffs after a case has been arbitrated and there is no dispute plaintiff exhibited that due diligence in this case. From this point on, according to Moran, the responsibility to perform diligently shifts to the court. The statute “imposes a duty upon the court sua sponte to recalendar the trial” and “[the section 583, subdivision (b)] [hereafter section 583(b)] period will remain tolled until the new trial date set by the court.” There is no suggestion in the Supreme Court opinion that the plaintiff must demonstrate diligence of any kind—after requesting the trial de novo in a timely fashion—to activate the tolling period or to keep it running. Rather the tolling is automatic and continues without further action by plaintiff from the time the plaintiff asks for a trial de novo until the new trial date the court sets in discharge of its sua sponte duty.
Santa Monica Hospital Medical Center v. Superior Court, supra, 203 Cal.App.3d 1026, and like cases represent nothing more nor less than creative evasions of this crystal clear holding—not dictum—issued only six years ago by the state’s highest court. If intermediate appellate courts think the Supreme Court was wrong in announcing the rule it did in Moran there are legitimate, well-recognized ways of asking the Supreme Court to take a second look. (See, e.g., In re Javier A. (1984) 159 Cal.App.3d 913, 919 [206 Cal.Rptr. 386].) What another court of appeal did in Santa Monica Hospital is not one of those ways. That court merely rewrote Moran to suit its own policy preferences. It may have done so in an expectation its amended version would find acceptance with the current Supreme Court. But even if that is a sound guess about the present predilections of the Supreme Court, it is not a sound approach to prior decisions of the high court. Under established principles of stare decisis it simply is not appropriate for an intermediate appellate court to undertake on its own to rewrite existing *1539Supreme Court decisions to match what it perceives the current California Supreme Court might want. If there is to be a second look at Moran that second look is for the Supreme Court itself to take, not the intermediate appellate courts.
I am pleased to see the majority of this court has not rejected Justice Thompson’s opinion in Barna outright and instead has elected to attempt to distinguish its facts from those of the instant case. At the same time, I regret the majority has turned away from Justice Thompson’s accurate reading of the Supreme Court holding in Moran.
The facts of Barna may be distinguishable from the instant case, but those facts are not distinguishable in ways that have legal significance. Nearly every case can be differentiated in some way from any other. Even those that are “on all fours” with each other will not be “on all eights” or “on all sixteens.” The question is whether they differ in legally significant ways, that is, ways that mean the rule as announced by the Supreme Court applies to one factual situation but not to the other. The rule announced in Moran was that if, after an arbitration a party requests a trial de novo, then the court has a sua sponte duty to set the trial date and the 583(b) period tolls until the date the court sets for that trial. In the instant case as in Barna the plaintiff requested a trial de novo. That is the only legally salient fact about the plaintiff’s behavior to be found in the announced rule. Thus, in both Barna and the instant case logic dictates the same consequence must follow—the 583(b) period tolls until the trial date the trial court elected to fix.
The majority holds plaintiffs did not display “due diligence” because they did not alert the trial court to the fact the trial date it set was more than five years after the case had been initially filed. As I discussed earlier, Moran requires no diligence of plaintiff other than a request for trial de novo. But if some sort of diligence were required it would not be to apprise the court the five-year period had been exceeded by its trial setting. For, under Moran, the 583(b) period does not expire five years after the case was filed; it expires in five years plus the duration of time the period is tolled—from the request for trial de novo until the trial date the court actually sets. Tolling means just that. The amount of time involved simply does not count at all in calculating the limitation period the law allows for certain steps to be started or completed. There was no reason for plaintiffs to warn the trial court that five years would expire before the trial date it had chosen to set because five years was no longer the operative 583(b) limit. Accordingly, plaintiffs can hardly be accused of failing to exhibit due diligence for omitting a warning about the expiration of a time limit that was not expiring.
In the instant case, plaintiffs behaved reasonably. A clear holding of the California Supreme Court and this court’s interpretation of that holding *1540told real parties they need not do anything beyond what they already had done to activate the tolling period. Furthermore, that Supreme Court holding and our earlier opinion reassured them the tolling would continue until the date the trial court actually set for trial. Nothing in these earlier opinions warned them it was their duty somehow to alert the trial court if that court in the exercise of its sole sua sponte duty chose a date beyond five years. Since in Moran only 43 days remained of the original five-year period it was very likely any date the trial court set upon remand of that case indeed would be beyond five years. Yet the Supreme Court tolled the operation of 583(b) until the actual trial date whether or not that turned out to be more than five years after the case was filed.
Now after the fact the majority is informing plaintiffs the ball was in their court after all, despite the Supreme Court’s unequivocal call handing that ball to the trial judge. As stare decisis dictates it is for the Supreme Court alone to revisit Moran, common fairness suggests any change any court makes in the Moran rule should be prospective. It is one thing to require plaintiffs to exhibit diligence in ways the courts say they must; it is quite another to require them to exhibit diligence in ways the courts expressly say they need not.
The principle Justice Thompson found in Moran and applied to the facts of that case cannot be distinguished away. And, in my opinion, that principle compels denial of this petition. Ours was the only defensible position both in terms of careful interpretation of language and of proper respect for stare decisis. This division had it right the first time and should have stuck with it.