Court Opinion

ID: 9748189
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 15:54:28.645338+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:32.545278
License: Public Domain

VOGEL (MIRIAM A.), J.
I concur in the judgment but write separately because I believe there is a more direct means to the same end.
Facts
In December 1998, Crystal Lynn Morris and Michelle Ann Blank were involved in an automobile accident. In November 1999, Morris (represented by the Law Offices of Arthur H. Barens) sued Blank in the Los Angeles Superior Court, North Valley District.1 On December 2, Blank was personally served with summons and the complaint. On December 10, Blank (in propria persona) sued Morris in municipal court (Newhall Judicial District); *833Blank’s complaint did not mention Morris’s superior court action, and Blank did not file a notice of related cases in either court. Blank’s complaint was not served on Morris at that time.
On January 12, 2000, in the superior court case, Blank (represented by Kim B. Puckett, a lawyer provided by the Interinsurance Exchange of the Automobile Club of Southern California, Blank’s insurer) answered and cross-complained against Morris (for declaratory relief and apportionment but not for any affirmative relief). Although Blank’s answer was served on Barens (Morris’s lawyer), the cross-complaint was not served on Morris or Barens. Neither pleading mentioned Blank’s municipal court action. On March 20, Morris was served with summons and the complaint in Blank’s municipal court action.
In April, Blank’s husband (Bill Blank, an Auto Club claims adjuster) contacted Morris’s insurer (Carnet Insurance Company) in an effort to settle Blank’s municipal court action. Ultimately, Blank and Carnet agreed to settle Blank’s municipal court action for $1,200, in exchange for which Blank agreed to execute a release of all claims against Morris and dismiss her municipal court action. Nothing in the record suggests that Morris was aware of these negotiations or of the settlement. Nothing suggests that Barens knew what was going on.
The Blanks gave Carnet a copy of Blank’s municipal court complaint, and Carnet asked the Blanks to send a copy of Blank’s complaint to its lawyers, Selman & Breitman. Nothing in the record suggests that Selman & Breitman was representing Morris, or that Morris even knew of the firm’s existence; to the contrary, it appears that Barens was the only lawyer representing Morris, and that (in April, May and June) Selman & Breitman was representing Carnet—and only Carnet. Carnet paid Blank the $1,200, and (on May 12) Blank signed a release of all claims. On June 6, she dismissed her municipal court action.2 Morris had never appeared in the municipal court action.3 Since Blank’s husband initiated settlement discussions directly with Carnet, then forwarded papers to Selman & Breitman at Carnet’s request, and since Selman & Breitman had at that point never appeared for Morris (or anyone) *834in either action, there is no way that Blank could have viewed Selman & Breitman as Morris’s lawyer.
At a June 28 status conference in Morris’s superior court action, Blank was ordered to serve her cross-complaint on Morris, and she did so that day by mailing a copy to Morris’s lawyer (Barens). Blank (represented by Puckett) then moved for summary judgment on the ground that her dismissal of her municipal court action operated as a retraxit and, as such, barred Morris’s claim for damages allegedly arising out of the same accident. In her supporting declaration, Blank described her settlement of her municipal court action and asserted that Morris “was represented by the law firm of Selman & Breitman. I dealt primarily with Ms. Morris’s attorney Kelly M. Lynch, of Selman & Breitman, during [the municipal court] lawsuit.”
Morris (represented—-for the first time—by Selman & Breitman) opposed Blank’s motion for summary judgment, contending that the rule of retraxit did not apply because (among other things) the municipal court action had been settled by her insurer in another action in which Morris had never appeared. In her separate statement, Morris disputed Blank’s claim that Selman & Breitman was representing her at the time the municipal court action was settled, and disputed Blank’s assertion that the settlement was made on her behalf. Morris presented evidence to establish that the offer to settle was made by Carnet as Morris’s insurer, not by Morris, and to show that the settlement was entered before Selman & Breitman undertook its representation of Morris.
The trial court, explaining that it did so only because it believed itself bound by the retraxit cases, granted Blank’s motion.
Discussion
In my view, the majority’s detailed discussion about retraxit is confusing and irrelevant. Blank failed to establish that the settlement was negotiated or paid by an insurer or attorney acting with Morris’s express or implied authority. From the evidence, it appears that both Morris and Blank advised their carriers about the automobile accident, waited to see who would sue whom first, then separately ran to different courthouses just before the one year statute would have expired. Blank, married to a claims adjuster who worked for her insurer, initiated settlement discussions that focused on her municipal court action, leaving Morris’s retained lawyer (Barens) out of the loop. While I wouldn’t go so far as to suggest that the Blanks and the Auto Club set out to create a retraxit defense to Morris’s action, I most certainly would and do say that the evidence suggests they settled Blank’s claim with Carnet and Carnet’s lawyers, not with Morris or Morris’s lawyer.
*835Under the circumstances of this case, nothing that happened in the municipal court action could possibly affect Morris or her claim against Blank.4 (Barney v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co. (1986) 185 Cal.App.3d 966, 973-981 [230 Cal.Rptr. 215] [an insurer has a duty to not use its settlement power in a manner injurious to its insured’s rights]; Yanchor v. Kagan (1971) 22 Cal.App.3d 544, 549-550 [99 Cal.Rptr. 367] [a lawyer who acts without his client’s actual or ostensible authority cannot bind the client]; and see Rothtrock v. Ohio Farmers Ins. Co. (1965) 233 Cal.App.2d 616, 623 [43 Cal.Rptr. 716] [mere employment of a lawyer to represent a client in litigation does not carry with it the legal right, without the knowledge or consent of the client, to compromise with impunity that litigation for reasons foreign to the client’s substantial rights or best interests].) For these reasons, no purpose is served by the majority’s attempted exegesis about the rules of retraxit.

Morris was joined in her complaint by Bertha Allen, her passenger at the time of the accident. Allen is not a party to this appeal.

The request for dismissal, signed by Blank and purportedly filed by her in propria persona, has a proof of service showing that (on June 6) it was served by mail on “Michelle Ann Blank” (and not on anyone else). The proof of service is signed by Duana Chenier, whose business address is 11766 Wilshire Boulevard, Sixth Floor, Los Angeles, California 90025. That is Selman & Breitman’s address.

Blank’s effort to show that Morris did appear in the municipal court action does not prove her point. On May 18, after the settlement was negotiated by Selman & Breitman and after Blank had signed the release, Barens (the lawyer who filed Morris’s superior court case) filed an amendment to Morris’s complaint, substituting the Auto Club for a Doe defendant. By mistake, Barens used a municipal court form, but the file stamp shows the document was filed in Morris’s superior court action, not in Blank’s municipal court action.

My colleagues do not mention the fact that the trial court (ignoring the one judgment rule) purportedly granted summary judgment only on Morris’s complaint. A couple of months later, the court granted a second and separate motion for summary judgment, disposing of Blank’s cross-complaint in Morris’s favor. Since Blank has not appealed from either judgment, her cross-complaint is no longer part of this case. The only claims to be tried on remand are Morris’s claims against Blank and the Auto Club.