General Motors Corp. v. Superior Court of Los Angeles County

• Decision Date: 04 August 1966
• Citation: 416 P.2d 492,52 Cal.Rptr. 460,65 Cal.2d 88
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: , 416 P.2d 492 GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION, Petitioner, v. SUPERIOR COURT OF LOS ANGELES COUNTY, Respondent; William MARASKA et al., Real Parties in Interest. L.A. 28758. In Bank

Page 460

52 Cal.Rptr. 460

65 Cal.2d 88, 416 P.2d 492

GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION, Petitioner, v. SUPERIOR COURT OF LOS ANGELES COUNTY, Respondent William MARASKA et al., Real Parties in Interest.

L.A. 28758.

Supreme Court of California,

In Bank.

Aug. 4, 1966.

Spray, Gould & Bowers, Philip L. Bradish and John J. Costanzo, Los Angeles, for petitioner.

No appearance for respondent.

Harney, Ford & Schlottman and Robert E. Ford, Los Angeles, for real parties in interest.

MOSK, Justice.

Petitioner (hereinafter defendant) seeks a writ of prohibition to restrain the superior court from proceeding to try a personal injury action. The issue before us is whether Code of Civil Procedure, section 583, which prescribes the time within which the trial of an action must be commenced, effectively precluded the real parties in interest (hereinafter plaintiffs) from consolidating for trial a personal injury action and a wrongful death action arising out of the same accident and involving substantially the same facts. We conclude that defendant's motion to dismiss the personal injury action was properly denied by the trial court and that the writ of prohibition should be refused.

On June 15, 1960, plaintiffs William Maraska and his wife Bernice filed a complaint seeking damages for personal injuries sustained in an automobile accident. Plaintiffs allege in the complaint that the accident was caused by the faulty design of their automobile, which had been manufactured by defendant. After this action was commenced, the parties engaged in normal pretrial activities, including the preparation of written interrogatories, the filing of an amended complaint, and the submission of various pretrial motions.

Bernice Maraska died on August 3, 1963, before the parties had completed their preparations for trial. On February 20, 1964, William Maraska and Martin Parsons, Bernice Maraska's son, filed a wrongful death action alleging that her death had resulted from injuries sustained in the accident. An attempt was then made to consolidate both of these actions with similar lawsuits brought against defendant by other plaintiffs, but that motion for consolidation was denied in July 1964. Plaintiffs' subsequent motion to consolidate the personal injury action with the wrongful death action was granted on December 16, 1964. Preparations for trial of the consolidated actions proceeded until defendant moved on September 20, 1965, to dismiss the personal injury action for want of prosecution. ¹ This motion was denied, and defendant sought the writ which we now consider.

Defendant insists that the provisions of Code of Civil Procedure section 583 required the trial court to grant the motion for dismissal. This section provides that the trial court may in its discretion dismiss an action if it has not been brought to trial within two years after it has been filed; with certain exceptions, dismissal is mandatory if the trial has not commenced within five years after filing. ²

The purposes served by this section are somewhat analogous to those underlying statutes of limitation. Both types of statutes promote the trial of cases before evidence is lost, destroyed, or the memory of witnesses becomes dimmed. The statutes also protect defendants from being subjected to the annoyance of an unmeritorious action remaining undecided for an indefinite period of time. However, section 583 would appear to involve policy considerations somewhat less crucial than those safeguarded by statutes of limitation. Once an action is filed and a defendant is served, he is then armed with notice of plaintiff's claim and may protect his interests by means which were generally unavailable to him before filing. For example, he may institute discovery processes in order to preserve evidence which might be destroyed, may locate ma terial witnesses and take depositions if appropriate, and may move that a frivolous or sham action be dismissed.

In the context of the present case we first attempt to reconcile the provisions of section 583 with the concept that related disputes should be heard and decided in one proceeding whenever possible. (Tomales Bay Oyster Corp. v. Superior Court (1950) 35 Cal.2d 389, 395, 217 P.2d 968.) Analysis suggests no inconsistency between this principle and the general policies promoted by section 583, for the consolidation of actions decreases the backlog of cases pending before trial courts and thus enables other litigants to bring their actions to trial with less delay. Consolidation also constitutes an important protection to defendants who might otherwise be subjected to a multiplicity of actions involving related issues.

Code of Civil Procedure section 1048 provides, 'An action may be severed and actions may be consolidated, in the discretion of the court, whenever it can be done without prejudice to a substantial right.' Pursuant to this statute, actions may be consolidated for the purpose of trying related issues whether or not they could have been united for all other purposes (see McClure on Behalf of Caruthers v. Donovan (1949) 33 Cal.2d 717, 721--722, 205 P.2d 17), but the determination is within the discretion of the trial court since it is impossible to foresee all the possibilities of prejudice which might arise from such consolidation.

However, with respect to wrongful death actions, the Legislature has determined that the danger of prejudice is generally outweighed by the advantages of consolidation. Code of Civil Procedure section 377, the wrongful death statute, specifically provides that 'If an action be brought pursuant to the provisions of this section and a separate action arising out of the same wrongful act or neglect be brought pursuant to the provisions of Section 573 of the Probate Code (dealing with the survivability of causes of action), such actions Shall be consolidated for trial on the motion of any interested party.' (Italics added.) Plaintiffs' actions are governed by this provision since it appears that the complaints seek damages for the death of Bernice Maraska and for personal injuries sustained by her, both of which events were allegedly caused by the same negligence of defendant and arose out of the same accident. (Cf. Herrero v. Atkinson (1964) 227 Cal.App.2d 69, 76, 38 Cal.Rptr. 490.)

It is undisputed that at the time defendant moved for dismissal of the personal injury action the parties had not completed their preparations for the trial of the wrongful death action. Their unpreparedness was not due to lack of diligence; the cause of action for wrongful death did not accrue until August 1963, and defendant does not dispute that plaintiffs thereafter filed the action and carried out their discovery procedures with reasonable dispatch. Since at the time of hearing the motion for dismissal of the personal injury action the wrongful death action was not yet ready for trial, we must determine whether the language of Code of Civil Procedure section 583 required plaintiffs to waive their rights of consolidation and to litigate these related disputes in two separate trials.

Code of Civil Procedure section 583 contains no language specifically dealing with the consolidation of actions, nor does it define the term 'action' as used therein. Thus, it may be suggested that the consolidation results in the creation of a new unified action and that the five-year period prescribed in section 583 commences again on the date of consolidation. However, such an interpretation would be inconsistent with decisions holding that actions may be consolidated for the limited purpose of trying related issues together. (See McClure on Behalf of Caruthers v. Donovan (1949) supra, 33 Cal.2d 717, 721--722, 205 P.2d 17.) Futhermore, section 583 provides that the period commences when the action 'is filed,' and no new pleadings need be filed at the time of consolidation.

Plaintiffs assert that the word 'action' relates in all cases to the last filed of two or more actions which have been consolidated and, therefore, that the trial may be brought at any time within five years after the filing of the wrongful death action. However, this construction does not avoid the objection discussed above that consolidated actions do not necessarily become united for purposes other than the trial of related issues. Also, such an interpretation of the statute would make it possible for a plaintiff to intentionally delay the filing of two or more additional causes of action in order to extend the period in which a previously filed action must be brought to trial, and we cannot presume that the Legislature intended to condone such dilatory tactics.

For the purposes of Code of Civil Procedure section 583, actions by a plaintiff are treated as wholly separate from cross-actions brought by the defendant. (Tomales Bay Oyster Co. v. Superior Court (1950) supra, 35 Cal.2d 389, 393--395, 217 P.2d 968; see Wutchumna Water Co. v. Stevenson (1928) 204 Cal. 191, 192, 267 P. 537; Douglas v. Superior Court (1949) 94 Cal.App.2d 395, 398, 210 P.2d 853.) Similarly, it would seem that in applying the provisions of Code of Civil Procedure section 583, individual actions brought by plaintiffs should be treated as distinct even though they have been consolidated, and the time for bringing each action to trial should be measured from the time that particular action was filed.

Plaintiffs' personal injury action was filed on June 15, 1960; therefore, the period for bringing that action to trial normally would have expired on June 15, 1965. It does not necessarily follow, however, that a trial of the consolidated actions should be restrained. Prior decisions have recognized certain implied exceptions to section 583, and it is necessary to examine the scope of these exceptions before determining whether the trial court erred in refusing to dismiss the personal injury action.

Possibly the most obvious of the implied exceptions was recognized in Kinard...