Court Opinion

ID: 9747108
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 14:57:10.121292+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:20.230740
License: Public Domain

*1526JOHNSON, J.
I respectfully dissent.
In my view, it was an abuse of discretion not to allow appellant the opportunity for the Code of Civil Procedure section 4731 relief to which he was so clearly entitled if the court reached the merits. This is not a case where the petitioning party made a mistake he must plead with the court to excuse. Here the mistake almost certainly was committed by the judge or other court personnel, not by either party.2 For the court to avoid confronting and remedying its own mistake by invoking a time bar it was not required to impose constitutes just the sort of discretionary decision the appellate court should view with suspicion.
At the time appellant sought relief from the trial court’s mistaken dismissal of his case a full three months remained before expiration of the six-month outer time limit for pursuing a remedy under section 473. It is true the law also grants trial courts discretion to deny section 473 petitions unless they are filed in a “reasonable time” (Smith v. Pelton Water Wheel Co. (1907) 151 Cal. 394, 397 [90 P. 934].) However, that discretion must be exercised reasonably. The three-month delay in this case is well within the time frame where courts routinely allow section 473 motions to be considered on the merits, with little or no excuse for the delay. (DeMello v. DeMello (1954) 124 Cal.App.2d 135 [268 P.2d 26] [six-month delay with three months of it after discovery of default with no excuse for the delay after discovery, yet court heard and granted section 473 relief]; Berman v. Klassman (1971) 17 Cal.App.3d 900, 909 [95 Cal.Rptr. 417] [unexplained, unexcused ninety-three-day delay, yet court heard and granted section 473 relief]; Outdoor Imports, Inc. v. Stanoff (1970) 7 Cal.App.3d 518 [86 Cal.Rptr. 593] [total four-and-one-half-month delay, two and one-half months of it unexplained and unexcused delay after settlement negotiations collapsed, yet court heard and granted section 473 relief].)
Appellant’s reason for waiting three months to seek section 473 relief is only marginally stronger than the “no excuses” explanations tendered in cases like DeMello, Berman, and Outdoor Imports. Yet relief was granted without excuses in those cases and should be with a minimal excuse here.
In my view, the trial court should have welcomed the opportunity to correct what clearly was its own mistake. Instead the court unreasonably *1527imposed a “reasonable time” requirement to reject a 473 petition despite the fact it was filed within a time frame other courts have deemed reasonable. This I consider a clear abuse of discretion and one appellate courts cannot countenance.

Unless otherwise indicated all statutory references are to the Code of Civil Procedure.

In this case both parties understood the trial judge to announce the date as October 19th. Consequently, neither appeared on October 9th when the court clerk had scheduled the appearance. Respondent offers what seems the most likely explanation—the clerk misunderstood the judge and entered the wrong date, an error which the trial judge did not detect when neither party appeared on October 9th. Thereafter, the trial judge compounded the clerk’s mistake by dismissing appellant’s case.