Quickie § 998 Offer Not in Good Faith

Licudine v. Cedars-Sinai Med. Cntr., No. B286350 (D1d2 Jan. 3, 2019)

If a Defendant turns down a Plaintiff’s valid § 998 offer and then Plaintiff beats the number at trial, Plaintiff gets to recover prejudgment interest from the date of the offer. But the offer has to be valid. And to be valid, the offer has to have been made in good faith—§ 998 exists to foster reasonable settlements, not to reward the parties for engaging in gamesmanship.

Here, Plaintiff, who made no demand in her prayer for relief, sprung a §998 offer on defendant only a few days after the answer was filed. Defendant had yet to obtain any discovery on damages. (Or basically anything else for that matter.) The Court of Appeal here affirms the trial court’s finding that the offer wasn’t in good faith. In doing so, it notes that although the good faith analysis looks to a totality of the circumstances, three factors are “especially pertinent”: “(1) how far into the litigation the 998 offer was made; (2) the information available to the offeree prior to the 998 offer’s expiration; and (3) whether the offeree let the offeror know it lacked sufficient information to evaluate the offer, and how the offeror responded.”

Affirmed.