Judge: David A. Hoffer, Case: 30-2022-01279366, Date: 2023-08-28 Tentative Ruling
Defendant CalOptima’s (“Defendant” or “CalOptima”) Demurrer to plaintiff Tracy Hitzeman’s (“Plaintiff”) First Amended Complaint (“FAC”) is OVERRULED.
This matter previously came up for hearing before the court on 07/24/23, at which time the court continued the hearing to allow for additional briefing. After reviewing the original pleadings and additional briefing, the court the court finds the following:
The Original Complaint was timely filed within the six-month limitation period of the Gov’t Claims Act Although CalOptima was not named in the caption of the original Complaint, it is clear from the allegations in body of the Complaint that CalOptima was the intended defendant in this matter. Plaintiff brought this action against “County of Orange, which includes its subdivision CalOptima.” (9/6/22 Complaint, Preamble Paragraph). Furthermore, the complaint alleges employment law causes of action and alleges that CalOptima was the employer. (Complaint, Paragraph 22).
The failure to include CalOptima in the caption was merely a technical defect, which does not support sustaining the demurrer on the basis that the limitation period has run. (Bell v. Tri-City Hosp. Dist. (1987) 196 Cal. App. 3d 438, 448, fn 5.) “An incomplete caption will not in itself preclude a complaint from stating a cause of action against a defendant otherwise adequately identified in the body of the complaint.” (Id., at 448.) Additionally, “[i]t has been uniformly held in our state that in order to determine the identity of a party courts are entitled to take into consideration the allegations of the complaint as well as the title. [Citations.] . . . “[i]t should require no argument to sustain the view that in determining who the parties to an action are the whole body of the complaint is to be taken into account, and not the caption merely.” (Plumlee v. Poag (1984) 150 Cal. App. 3d 541, 547.).
The court realizes that it had previously proposed to sustain the demurrer, citing the case of Plumlee v. Poag (1984) 150 Cal. App. 3d 541, 547 for the proposition (at that time undisputed in any of the briefing) that “full notice” must be given before the court can treat a failure to list the correct defendant in the caption as a harmless misnomer. However, upon further reflection (and the further briefing on this point) the court finds that, if anything, Plumlee supports the plaintiff’s position in that it dispenses with technical pleading requirements “in order to promote substantive rights.” Id. In Plumlee, the court found that the failure to sue defendants in their representative capacities was a technical defect and that substantive rights were promoted by allowing the plaintiff to amend even though the limitations period had expired. Here too, despite the fact that, as discussed above, CalOptima was clearly set forth as the political division responsible for the alleged adverse employment actions, CalOptima argues that it lacked notice until just after the statute had expired. To promote substantive rights, the court treats this as a harmless misnomer.
Moreover, as the plaintiff points out, interpreting Plumlee’s notice requirement too strictly stands in stark contrast to well established case law that the case commences with the filing of the complaint, not the service of that complaint on the parties. (See Cuadra v. Millan (1999) 17 Cal. 4th 855, 864–865.). If full notice is not required at all for an ordinary complaint, it should not be strictly required for one where the defendant is included in the body of the complaint, but not the caption.
This is not to say that any delay of notice can ever be a basis for denying a request to include an uncaptioned defendant based upon inclusion in the body of the complaint. The court can easily imagine a scenario where notice is so delayed that it is prejudicial to the defense to allow a defendant not in the caption to enter the case. But this is not that case. Here, full notice was provided within days of the expiration of the statute and there is no prejudice at all to the defense – just the denial of the windfall of sidestepping a serious whistleblower complaint based on a technical defect. On the facts of the present case, the court finds that allowing the case to go forward promotes substantive rights. (See Malibu Committee for Incorporation v. Board of Supervisors (1990) 222 Cal.App.3d 397, 408 (“the law strongly favors important decisions being made on their merits rather than by default”)).
The demurrer is overruled. Defendant to file its answer within 20-days written notice of the court’s ruling.
Plaintiff is ordered to give notice of this ruling.