Government Liability Update

Classes Seeking County Tax Refunds Need Only Present Single Claim for Damages

Reviewing over 30 years of case law on claims procedures as applied to class actions and tax refund actions, County of Los Angeles v. Superior Court (Oronoz) concluded that a class action seeking a refund on a county tax requires only a single prelitigation claim for damages on behalf of the entire class.  Government Code section 910's requirements that the claim include specified information concerning the claimant are applied as if the class was the claimant.

Contract Breaches Need Claims Too

A new California Supreme Court Case, City of Stockton v. Superior Court (Civic Partners Stockton, LLC) , filed December 3, 2007 settles several important issues concerning the Government Code's claim requirements for suing public entities:

• Resolving a longtime split in authority, the Court ruled that the claim-presentation requirements apply to breach of contract claims that seek damages.  They are not limited to tort claims.
• Because the Government Code sections controlling claims and liability of public entities apply to more than just claims, the Court proclaimed it would no longer describe Government Code section 810 et seq as the "Tort Claims Act."  Instead, it will refer to the statutes as the "Government Claims Act."
• Government Code section 814, which states that nothing in "this party" applies to breach of contract, only deals with the immunity portions of the Government Claims Act.  The claim requirements have nothing to do with Governmental immunity.
• A plaintiff cannot argue that the entity is estopped from enforcing the claim-presentation requirements unless the plaintiff can identify a specific act or statement by the entity that prevented or deterred it from filing a timely claim.
• An entity does not waive the claim-presentation requirements by waiting until the claim-presentation period has expired before asserting the requirements.  The defendant here did not waive the requirements by filing multiple demurrers that did not assert the plaintiff''s failure to present a claim.
• Correspondence does not constitute a "claim as presented" -- requiring the entity to respond with a Notice of Insufficiency or else waive the claim requirement -- unless it "specifically alert[s] defendants to weigh the alternatives of litigation or compromise."

Shirk v. Vista Unified School District: Cal Supreme Court Decides Accrual Standard for Adult Claims of Child Molestation

In 2005, the California Courts of Appeal rendered conflicting decisions on whether Code of Civil Procedure section 340.1(c) applied to the six-month deadline to present a personal injury claim to a public entity.  Section 340.1(c), passed in 2002, "revived" for the calendar year of 2003 any causes of action for childhood molestation against non-molesters (those who failed to prevent the molestation) that would otherwise have been barred solely by the statute of limitations for molestation cases.  The Second District Court of Appeal decided that section 340.1(c) only applied to statutes of limitations -- i.e., limitation periods for filing lawsuits -- and that the six-month period for presenting a claim was not a statute of limitation.  Thus, the time to present a claim ran from the date of the last act of molestation. (County of Los Angeles v. Superior Court (2005) 127 Cal.App.4th 1263, 1269.) In the Shirk case, however, The Fourth District Court of Appeal, Division One, however, ruled that section 340.1(c) governed the date the cause of action accrued; and since the time to present a claim runs from accrual, the court decided that section 340.1(c) did extend the time to present a claim.

To resolve the conflict, the California Supreme Court accepted review of the Shirk case; and in its opinion, published today, it agreed with the Second District.  It ruled that section 340.1(c) only applies to "statutes of limitations"; and since the time to present a claim isn't a statute of limitations, section 340.1(c) did not apply to it.   

Appeals Can Toll Statutes of Limitations; but Incapacity Does Not

Paniagua v. Orange County Fire Authority is a newly-published case in which we represented the defendant city as appellate counsel.  It resolves two unsettled issues concerning the statute of limitations for filing a complaint against a public entity after a late-claim application is denied.

In 1998, the plaintiff in Paniagua was injured in a fight.  Police officers of the defendant city detained plaintiff, and called paramedics from the defendant fire authority to examine him.  The paramedics recommended plaintiff seek medical treatment.  Plaintiff refused.  The officers drove plaintiff to his home.  After the officers left, plaintiff fell into a coma.  He has never awakened.

Within a year of the incident, attorneys for plaintiff sued the man who hit plaintiff.  A little over a year after the incident, the attorneys filed late-claim applications with the public entity defendants.  Both denied the applications.  The appellate court determined that the denials failed to specifically deny the claims, thus triggering the two-year-from-accrual statute of limitations.

The attorneys petitioned the court for relief from the claims requirements.  They appealed the denial.  In 2002, the appellate court ruled that the public entities should have granted the applications, and therefore affirmed the denial of the petition (as superfluous).  Several months after the case was remitted to trial court, the plaintiffs filed an amended complaint naming the public entity defendants.

The trial court granted the public entities judgment based on the two-year statute of limitations.  The appellate court affirmed.  In the process, it held:

-- Plaintiff's cause of action accrued when he was assaulted.

-- The plaintiff's incapacity did not toll his two years to file a complaint -- even during the time he lacked a guardian or conservator.  Incapacity can only excuse late presentation of a claim or (in certain circumstances) a late-claim application; it cannot excuse a late complaint.

-- The appeal from denial of the section 946.6 petition for relief from claim requirements tolled the statute of limitations.  It was a necessary step before they could file suit.

-- But even subtracting the two years the petition appeal was pending, the complaint was filed more than two years after accrual.  It was therefore time-barred.

Public Entity's Mistaken Statement on Law to Represented Plaintiff Does Not Create Estoppel

Jordan v. City of Sacramento, published today, deals with an issue that arises often in late claim and statute of limitations cases:  Allegations that a public entity is estopped from asserting a time limit because the entity purportedly misled a plaintiff's attorney on the law.  Here, the city's claims administrator told the attorney for a trip and fall plaintiff that the city was not liable for a fall on its sidewalks, based on the city's ordinances.  As a result, the plaintiff's attorney failed to file a complaint within six months after plaintiff's timely claim was rejected.

The court held that absent evidence of bad faith on the public entity's part, or a "confidential relationship" between the entity and plaintiff, entities cannot be estopped based on negligent misrepresentation of the law to a represented party.  That is because:

"[W]here the material facts are
known to both parties and the pertinent provisions of law are
equally accessible to them, a party’s inaccurate statement of
the law or failure to remind the other party about a statute of
limitations cannot give rise to an estoppel."

Further:

"The invocation of estoppel is particularly inappropriate
where the party seeking it was represented by counsel at the
time of the misrepresentation of law."

The court affirmed summary judgment for the city.

"The Claim Book" Updated

We have updated our publication on California government tort claim procedure, "The Claim Book."  It is available as a CD-Rom, which we will provide free to any California public entity, agency, or employee; and to any attorney or firm that defends public entities, agencies or employees.  If you want a copy, please e-mail dpb at pvandf dot com and provide your name, organization, and mailing address.

Important New Delayed-Discovery Claim Case

V.C. v. Los Angeles Unified School District (2nd DCA May 15, 2006) should prove to be a useful case for public entities asserting claim-timeliness defenses -- if the Supreme Court allows it to stand.

V.C. is a minor.  She alleges that one of her middle-school teachers sexually molested her from 2001-2003, while she was ages 11-13.  In 2003, V.C.'s mother notified the school in wriitng that she was worried about her daughter's safety around the teacher.  The teacher was arrested in August 2003, and later convicted and imprisoned for molesting V.C.  In September 2004 -- over a year after the arrest -- V.C. presented a claim for damages against the school district.  In October 2004, she filed an application for leave to present late claim.  When the District rejected the application, she filed a petition for relief with the court (which the court granted) and a lawsuit. 

The trial court sustained the District's demurrer to the lawsuit on the ground that V.C.'s petition should never have been granted.  The appellate court affirmed.

The ruling is important for the following reasons:

-- It holds that a trial court order granting a late-claim petition under Government Code section 946.6 does not foreclose the public entity defendant from raising the claim defense in the main case.  (Although the appellate opinion doesn't articulate this, the likely reason is that courts have no jurisdiction to hear a section 946.6 petition if the application was not filed within one year of accrual -- which the court found here.  The court cited City of Los Angeles v. Superior Court (1993) 14 Cal.App.4th 621, where a demurrer was sustained because the plaintiff's late-claim petition was filed late.  Whether the court could entertain a claim-based demurrer after a petition was granted -- and both the application and petition were timely -- is unclear.)

-- It agrees with another 2nd DCA case, County of Los Angeles v. Superior Court (N.L.) (2005) 127 Cal.APp.4th 1263, which held that Code of Civil Procedure 340.1 -- which holds that minors have until eight years after their eighteenth birthday to sue for childhood sexual molestation -- does not apply to suits against public entities.  This court and N.L. ruled that section 340.1 does not set a date of accrual (which would apply to the deadline to present a claim against a public entity); instead, it is a statute of limitations (which is superseded by the claim-presentation limitations under the Government Code).

Note that the issue of whether section 340.1 is a statute of limitation or an accrual standard is currently before the California Supreme Court in Shirk v. Vista Unified School Dist.  Shirk, a 4th DCA, Division One, case, held that section 340.1 was an accrual standard, and therefore extended the time to present a claim against a public entity. 

Since the Supreme Court did not grant review of N.L., that case, not Shirk, is currently the law.  Nevertheless, the Supreme Court might take up review of V.C. on this issue.

-- The court held that the child's cause of action accrued no later than the date her parents suspected the teacher of wrongdoing that injured V.C.  Here, the mother obviously suspected the teacher of wrongdoing when she complained to the school district about him.

-- Finally, the court held that the teacher's threats to V.C. could not equitably estop the district from asserting the claim defense.  The threats could only estop the district if they prevented V.C. from presenting a timely claim.  V.C. disclosed the threats to police in an August 2003 interview.  The threats therefore did not prevent her from disclosing the molestation -- and presenting a timely claim -- in the six months after August 2003.