In Maniago v. Desert Cardiology Consultants’ Medical Group, Inc., the Supreme Court yesterday ruled litigants can’t take a shortcut to guaranteed appellate review by “voluntarily dismiss[ing] their action before the [superior] court has reached a final resolution regarding any of the claims pleaded in the complaint.” Instead, that voluntary dismissal “terminate[s] the action entirely, thus forfeiting the right to appeal.”
Before the plaintiffs in the case filed their voluntary dismissal with the stated intent of expediting appellate review, the superior court had sustained a demurrer to some, but not all, of the plaintiffs’ claims with leave to amend and it had struck certain forms of requested relief, including punitive damages. The Supreme Court’s unanimous opinion by Justice Groban found “multiple reasons why the . . . voluntary dismissal cannot be properly characterized as an appealable judgment.”
Instead of a voluntary dismissal, the court said the plaintiffs could have sought discretionary Court of Appeal review by petitioning for a writ of mandate or they could have asked for “a judgment on the claims that were subject to the demurrer order and then abandon[ed] the claims that were not subject to that order through a voluntary dismissal.”
The court affirms the published opinion of the Fourth District, Division One, Court of Appeal. It also disapproves the Second District, Division Eight, decision in Austin v. Valverde (2012) 211 Cal.App.4th 546 and the Second District, Division Four, decisions in Flowers v. Prasad (2015) 238 Cal.App.4th 930 and Stewart v. Colonial Western Agency, Inc. (2001) 87 Cal.App.4th 1006. There was no petition for review in Austin or Stewart. The court denied review in Flowers.
