For California state court civil litigators, this might be the most important Court of Appeal decision to come out this year. Despite the fact that it will probably fly substantially under the radar.
Moreover, were I to have my druthers, I would probably ask the California Supreme Court to depublish it. If, as is unfortunately the case, the California Supreme Court hadn't already decided to publish it (at the request of the Court of Appeal itself).
The opinion is all about the motion reservation system that exists in state court. As you likely know, in many of the big counties, if you want to file a motion, you have to reserve a motion date -- typically, in an online reservation system. It lists the available dates, and you pick one and reserve it. That way, the state court judge isn't overwhelmed by too many motions on one date (or not enough on another).
That system has its problems, of course. You often can't get the date you want, and sometimes, the earliest available date is months away. That stinks, but it is what it is.
Predictably, this leads to the possibility of "hoarding" reservation dates: to reserve dates that you don't intend on using just so they're available. To solve this problem, most counties require that after you reserve a particular date, you file the underlying motion some specified period of time thereafter. In some counties, it's three days; in others, it's ten. Regardless, if you don't file the motion within the relevant time period, you lose your hearing date.
That's the way it works.
In this case, on November 14, 2024, the defendant reserved a hearing date of April 1, 2025 to file a motion for summary judgment. (Ironically, April Fool's Day.) That was no problem. The hearing date was months after the MSJ motion would be filed, so complied with the (now) 81-day notice requirement of CCP 437c. The hearing date was also 30 days before trial (though barely so, since the trial was scheduled for May 2), so complied with 437c in that regard as well.
So far, so good.
In Riverside County, you've got ten days after reserving your hearing date to file the underlying motion. So if defendant had filed its motion anytime before November 24, 2024, everything would have been fine.
But it didn't. Instead, it waited to file its MSJ motion until January 10, 2025, which was 81 days before the hearing date.
That violated the ten day rule. So, three days later, the defendant received notice that its MSJ papers were bounced because it lost its hearing date by filing the motion a month and a half late. Defendant moved ex parte to get a new date on shortened notice, since at that point, no available date complied with the code, but the trial court denied the request. So defendant never got to file its MSJ. (Actually, defendant subsequently reserved a hearing date of April 29, which was three days before the trial, and the trial court heard the motion, but denied it, presumably on procedural grounds given the 30-day rule of CCP 437c.)
Defendant appeals, and argued that it was improperly denied its right to file an MSJ under CCP 437c.
The Court of Appeal agreed, and reversed. Justice Miller's very brief (seven page) opinion holds that since the defendant's MSJ motion complied with the statutory deadlines in CCP 437c, they were entitled to have the motion heard, notwithstanding the ten-day reservation requirement in Local Rule 3310.
To be honest, I'm sympathetic with the result. Which is why I wouldn't grant review of this particular opinion and reverse on the merits. It's a big deal to not have your MSJ heard. And the filing here was in plenty of time -- 80+ days before the hearing -- for the plaintiff to prepare an opposition, and honestly, it was fairly mean (or at least super strict) for the trial court to deny the ex parte request on January 22 to have the motion heard on April 1 notwithstanding their failure to file the motion back in November. The plaintiff still had plenty of notice. Personally, I would have granted that request. (I would have probably made defendant's counsel feel very bad for violating the Local Rule, and might have even conditioned the grant of the ex parte on the payment of some sanctions, but I'd have nonetheless let the MSJ be heard prior to the commencement of the trial. It's an important motion, and there's value in getting rid of a lengthy trial, alongside its associated expense and burden, if there's indeed no genuine issue of material fact.)
So, okay, I would be happy to call this a one-off abuse of discretion given the lengthy notice here, with an express caveat that counsel is nonetheless expected to comply with the local reservation rules and in an appropriate case, might well lose a hearing date if they fail to comply.
But that's not what the Court of Appeal does here.
Instead, it calls into question the entire validity of the existing hearing date reservation system. Justice Miller says that the decision "should not be construed as a challenge to the validity of Local Rule 3310," but its reasoning clearly does conflict with those provisions. The Court of Appeal's holding is based on the theory that because the defendant's motion complied with the statutory time limits of 437c, the court was obliged to hear it, regardless of the local rules. That means that anyone -- anyone -- can similarly ignore those rules. As long as I (1) reserve a court date, (2) file my MSJ 81+ days before the hearing, and (3) that hearing date is at least 30 days before trial, under the Court of Appeal's holding, the court is required to hear it. Regardless of whether or not I complied with the ten- (or three-, or whatever) reservation date requirement.
So why should I even bother to comply? Why give the other side extra weeks (or, months) of notice by filing my MSJ early? Just file it on the last possible statutory (81+) date. The trial court's got to hear it.
Seems to me like that makes the relevant local rules meaningless, or (at a minimum) utterly ineffective, at least as applied to MSJs.
Plus, the Court of Appeal's reasoning doesn't just apply to MSJs, in my view. CCP 437c nowhere says that the trial court has to hear an MSJ that's filed with 81+ days notice and 30 days before trial. It just sets minimums. That's no different than CCP 1005, which does a virtually identical thing (albeit with different deadlines) for regular motions. If you've got a right to have an MSJ heard even if you violate local rules, why don't you have the same right for other motions as well? The underlying statutory language is pretty much the same, after all. And, yes, MSJs are super important, but so are tons of non-MSJ motions; i.e., preliminary injunctions, motions to dismiss, etc. If the Court of Appeal's theory is that the statutory dictates trump the local reservation rules, then it seems like that's equally true for CCP 1005 motions as it is for motions under 437c. Which means, again, that the local reservation rules can be essentially ignored.
Look, I'm not a huge fan of the reservation rules. They sometimes prevent parties from filing motions that they want to file, and nearly always result in motions being heard far later than necessary (and with unnecessary excess notice to the other side). I suspect that we could easily tinker with that system to make it more efficient, albeit at some cost to trial courts who would occasionally be burdened with more motions on a given day than they would otherwise feel like handling. (Even then, in that setting, trial courts would always have discretion to occasionally continue motions on their own initiative; this seems to me a preferable way of doing things, though I readily concede that's easy for me, as a non-judge, to say.)
But just because I'm not a fan of the existing system doesn't mean I want local rules like these to be entirely preempted on the theory that the statutory dictates are all that matter. Because I'm not sure that's what the Legislature actually intended, or that it's what the statute's words actually say. And I definitely don't like a system where the most ethical lawyers play by the rules and faithfully follow the reservation system, whereas others game the thing and ignore those rules given the Court of Appeal's opinion.
So, like I said, I'm fine with the result here. I'm totally okay letting the defendant here have his day in court.
I just don't like the underlying theory (or rule).
That's why I wish this one had remained unpublished.
