Samara v. Matar, No. S240918 (Cal. Jun. 25, 2018)
The Supreme Court here upholds a 2017 Court of Appeal ruling, albeit on slightly different grounds.
To oversimplify the facts a bit, Plaintiff sued dentists―one who performed an oral surgery and one who recommended it. Defendant 1 moves for summary judgment on statute of limitations and causation. (Defendant 2 doesn’t move at this time.) The trial court grants on both grounds and enters a judgment for Defendant 1. Plaintiff appeals on both issues. The Court of Appeal affirms on the statute of limitations but declines to reach causation.
After the remittiur issues, Defendant 2 moves for summary judgment on causation. Defendant 2 argues that the earlier ruling on causation as to Defendant 1―which is exactly the same for Defendant 2―is preclusive on Plaintiff. Under an old California Supreme Court case, see People v. Skidmore, 27 Cal. 287 (1865), Defendant 2 is likely right.
But in the 150 years since Skidmore, preclusion jurisprudence, as reflected in the Restatement of Judgments, has evolved quite a bit. Most courts now decline to give preclusive effect to a trial court ruling on an alternative ground that, while properly challenged on appeal, is not reached by the appellate court. The consensus is that it’s unfair to stick a party with the effects of a ruling that it tried to appeal, but was unable to through no fault of its own. So the Supreme Court decides to overrule Skidmore, concluding ”that a ground reached by the trial court and properly challenged on appeal, but not embraced by the appellate court’s decision, should not affect the judgment’s preclusive effect.”
Of course, even absent preclusion, the trial court is likely to reach the same result when presented with the same issue on the same evidentiary record. But to the extent the trial court relied on preclusion to grant summary judgment on causation to Defendant 2, it erred in doing so.
Court of Appeal affirmed.
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