California Court of Appeal

In this case, defendant failed to repurchase or replace plaintiff's car under the Song-Beverly Consumer Warrant Act. At trial on plaintiff's claim for a civil penalty, the jury found that, while defendant did fail to comply with the Act, it had not done so willfully. Judgment of the trial court denying plaintiff's motion to compel discovery responses, granting a protective order that prevented plaintiff from taking two "persons most knowledgeable" depositions, denying plaintiff's motion for attorney fees, denying in part plaintiff's motion for costs and award defendant its costs is reversed as to the costs order and affirmed in all other respects, where: 1) plaintiff has failed to show it is reasonably probable the jury’s verdict would have been more favorable to him had the trial court granted his motion to compel discovery or denied the motion for a protective order; 2) plaintiff was not a prevailing party because he did not achieve his main litigation objective of obtaining a civil penalty; 3) the trial court erred in finding that defendant's Civil Code section 998 offer to compromise was valid, as, because the undefined and subjective nature of the term that defendant would repurchase the "undamaged" car, the offer was at least ambiguous; and 4) due to the invalidity of the section 998 offer, it did not operate to cut off plaintiff’s costs, nor did it entitle defendant to recoup its post-offer costs.

Appellate Information

• Decided 01/29/2015
• Published 01/29/2015

Judges

• Bigelow

Court

• California Court of Appeal

Counsel