Court Opinion

ID: 9846462
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:41:41.641649+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:19:32.808020
License: Public Domain

BAXTER, J., Concurring.
I concur in the judgment and with part II of the majority opinion. The automatic tolling recognized in Moran v. Superior Court (1983) 35 Cal.3d 229 [197 Cal.Rptr. 546, 673 P.2d 216] is no longer defensible. I also agree that a plaintiff has a responsibility to inform the court of the date on which the five-year period within which the action must be brought to trial will expire. Finally, I agree that dismissal of this action was proper.
I do not agree, however, that Code of Civil Procedure section 585.3401 tolled any part of the five-year period within which this action should have been brought to trial that fell after the arbitration award was filed and prior to November 12, 1991, the commencement of the last six months of that five-year period. Only forty-nine days within the six months immediately prior to expiration of the five-year period were tolled, and those were tolled by section 1141.17, not section 585.340. Therefore, because the five-year period expired on June 30, 1992, a date that fell before plaintiff moved to specially set, at the time that motion was made the superior court had no discretion in the matter. Dismissal was mandatory.
The majority hold that, because plaintiff could not bring her action to trial between the date the arbitration award became final and the effective date of the order conditionally granting defendant’s motion for relief from default, that time period was tolled under subdivision (c) of section 583.340 as a period when “[b]ringing the action to trial. . . was impossible, impracticable, or futile.”
Subdivision (c) of section 583.340 has no application here, however, as section 1141.17, which governs tolling of actions submitted to arbitration, is *445a special statute which supplants the more general provisions of section 583.340 as to any part of the five-year period devoted to arbitration-related proceedings except the final six months of that period. Special statutory provisions related to a particular subject will govern over more general provisions even though a general provision is broad enough to include the same subject. (§ 1859; Civ. Code, § 3534; Woods v. Young (1991) 53 Cal.3d 315, 325 [279 Cal.Rptr. 613, 807 P.2d 455]; People v. Tanner (1979) 24 Cal.3d 514, 521 [156 Cal.Rptr. 450, 596 P.2d 328]; Warne v. Harkness (1963) 60 Cal.2d 579, 588 [35 Cal.Rptr. 601, 387 P.2d 377].) Section 1141.17 permits tolling of arbitration-related time only as to that time that falls within the last six months of the five-year period within which an action must be brought to trial.
Section 1141.17 provides: “(a) Submission of an action to arbitration pursuant to this chapter shall not suspend the running of the time periods specified in Chapter 1.5 (commencing with Section 583.110) . . . except as provided in this section.
“(b) If an action is or remains submitted to arbitration pursuant to this chapter more than four years and six months after the plaintiff has filed the action, then the time beginning on the date four years and six months after the plaintiff has filed the action and ending on the date on which a request for de novo trial is filed under section 1141.20 shall not be included in computing the five-year period specified in Section 583.310.”
Therefore, as the majority concede, under section 1141.17, subdivision (a), tolling will only commence if the action “is or remains submitted to arbitration pursuant to this chapter more than four years and six months after the plaintiff has filed the action.” (Maj. opn., ante, p. 437.) For reasons that are not explained, however, the majority concludes, notwithstanding the fact that the trial court granted relief from default and permitted the filing of a postarbitration request for trial de novo, that the case did not remain submitted to arbitration until that request was filed within the meaning of section 1141.17. The majority do not acknowledge that regardless of the reason for the delay in the date on which defendant’s request for trial de novo became effective, when the order granting the request did become effective, the arbitration award was no longer final. The matter had been returned to the same arbitration status as any other matter submitted to arbitration. Therefore, the time between the filing of the arbitration award and effective date of the order for trial de novo is indistinguishable for purposes of section 1141.17 from the time during which a matter remains submitted to arbitration in a case in which a timely request is filed. The only *446time that section 1141.17 tolls is that falling within the last six months of the five-year period.
The result of the majority holding is that tolling is available under section 583.340 for time between filing of an arbitration award and the request for trial de novo even though that time is not within the last six months of the five-year period. That constitutes a grant of time within which to bring the action to trial that would not be available to a plaintiff whose action was filed on the same date, whose arbitration proceeded routinely, and who was forced into a trial de novo by a losing defendant who timely sought trial de novo before the last six months of the five-year period commenced.
The impact on this action is illustrative. On November 12, 1991 the action went into the last six months before the five-year statute mandated dismissal. Had the defendant filed a timely request for trial de novo, that is, filed the request by September 21, 1991, no part of the five-year period would have been tolled. Here, the request could not be filed until relief from default was granted and the court-imposed sanctions were paid on December 31, 1991. Thus, literal application of section 1141.17 would consider the matter to be under submission to arbitration until the request for trial de novo became effective and would toll the five-year statute only from the date of the commencement of the last six months, November 12, 1991, and December 31, 1991, or 49 days. This is already 49 days more than a plaintiff who filed the action on the same date would normally have to bring a case to trial after arbitration ending at the same time. Thanks to the largess of the majority, however, the plaintiff in cases like this is given not 49, but 70, days, additional time within which to bring the action to trial—all of the time from the date the arbitration award became final on September 21, 1991, until the request for trial de novo became effective on December 31, 1991, including time that is not within the final six-month period.
The majority offer no justification for creating this nonstatutory exception to the limited tolling allowed by section 1141.17.1 find none and conclude that the rule created by the majority which permits tolling before the final six months of the five-year period commences is contrary to the legislative intent reflected in section 1141.17.

All statutory references are to the Code of Civil Procedure.