The opinion
Filed 11/18/25
CERTIFIED FOR PUBLICATION
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
FIRST APPELLATE DISTRICT
DIVISION FOUR
ADRIA SNOVER, as represented,
etc., A172568
Plaintiff and Appellant,
v. (Riverside County Super.
ARUNA GUPTA, Ct. No. RIC1905783)
Defendant and Respondent.
Adria Snover, through her spouse and guardian ad litem Jordan
Callihan, appeals from a judgment awarding her $4,353,225 in damages
against Dr. Aruna Gupta. She sued after medical complications during a
cesarean section left her in a permanent coma. The jury awarded her close to
$7.5 million in economic damages and $10 million in noneconomic damages.
Before trial, she reached settlements with another doctor and with Riverside
Community Hospital (the hospital). On appeal, she asserts three errors in
the way the trial court reduced the damages award to account for the pretrial
settlements and the jury’s finding that Gupta’s proportionate responsibility
for Snover’s injury was 15 percent, with other tortfeasors 85 percent at fault.
Snover’s first claim of error arises from the interaction of two laws:
Civil Code section 3333.2 (the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act, or
MICRA), which at the time capped noneconomic damages for professional
negligence claims against health care providers at $250,000 (since raised to
$350,000), and Civil Code section 1431.2 (often referred to as Proposition 51,
1
the 1986 initiative measure that enacted it), which provides that liability for
noneconomic damages in every case is several only, with each defendant’s
liability allocated based on that defendant’s percentage of fault.1 Because the
tortfeasors here are all health care providers subject to MICRA, existing case
law required the trial court first to apply the statutory cap to the jury’s
noneconomic damages award and then to hold Gupta liable for 15 percent of
it, or $37,500. (See Gilman v. Beverly California Corp. (1991) 231 Cal.App.3d
121, 128–129 (Gilman).) Snover contends that the Gilman rule has been
undermined by the Supreme Court’s subsequent decision in Rashidi v. Moser
(2014) 60 Cal.4th 718 (Rashidi), which held that the MICRA cap applies only
to damages ordered by the court and does not include money the plaintiff
recovers in settlements—although we hasten to point out that, at least in
dictum, the Rashidi court endorsed the very approach that Snover would
have us abandon. Nonetheless, she argues that the order of operations
should be reversed, meaning the trial court should have first multiplied the
jury’s $10 million noneconomic damages award by Gupta’s 15 percent
responsibility, resulting in $1.5 million, and then capped it at $250,000
pursuant to MICRA.
1 Unless otherwise stated, statutory references that follow are to the
Civil Code. The MICRA cap was raised to $350,000 in January 2023.
(Stats. 2022, ch. 17, § 3, eff. Jan. 1, 2023.) We refer to the former version of
the statute that was operative through December 31, 2022. Subdivision (a) of
section 1431.2 provides: “In any action for personal injury, property damage,
or wrongful death, based upon principles of comparative fault, the liability of
each defendant for non-economic damages shall be several only and shall not
be joint. Each defendant shall be liable only for the amount of non-economic
damages allocated to that defendant in direct proportion to that defendant's
percentage of fault, and a separate judgment shall be rendered against that
defendant for that amount.”
2
Snover’s second, and (in her view) related, claim of error involves the
addition of a third law to the mix. In contrast to noneconomic damages,
liability for economic damages is joint. Civil Procedure Code section 877
allows a nonsettling defendant to set off the amount of any jointly liable
tortfeasors’ settlement against the damages awarded at trial.2 The court
must determine what portion of the settlement should be deemed to cover
economic losses—the portion for which joint liability exists—since only that
amount may be applied as a setoff (and only against the jury’s award of
economic damages). (Rashidi, supra, 60 Cal.4th at p. 722.) The widely
accepted methodology is to calculate the percentage of the jury’s total award
that was allocated to economic damages, and then to apply the same
percentage to the settlements. (Espinoza v. Machonga (1992) 9 Cal.App.4th
268, 275–277 (Espinoza).) Dividing the roughly $7.5 million economic
damages award in this case by the total award of $17.5 million yields a figure
of approximately 43 percent, which would mean that Gupta could set off
43 percent of Snover’s settlement amounts against the jury’s award of
economic damages. But the case law requires an initial step when MICRA
applies: The court first reduces the jury’s noneconomic damages award to the
MICRA cap, making the total award lower and, by extension, the percentage
of it that consists of economic damages higher. (Mayes v. Bryan (2006)
2 “Where a release, dismissal with or without prejudice, or a covenant
not to sue or not to enforce judgment is given in good faith before verdict or
judgment to one or more of a number of tortfeasors claimed to be liable for
the same tort, or to one or more other co-obligors mutually subject to
contribution rights, it shall have the following effect: [¶] (a) It shall not
discharge any other such party from liability unless its terms so provide, but
it shall reduce the claims against the others in the amount stipulated by the
release, the dismissal or the covenant, or in the amount of the consideration
paid for it, whichever is the greater.” (Code Civ. Proc., § 877.)
3
139 Cal.App.4th 1075, 1102–1103 (Mayes).) This adjustment allowed Gupta
to apply almost 97 percent of the settlement amounts as a setoff against the
jury’s economic damages award. Again in reliance on Rashidi, Snover argues
that the Mayes rule is incorrect, i.e., there is no valid reason to apply the
MICRA cap to the jury’s noneconomic damages award before calculating the
“Espinoza percentage” applicable to the settlements.
In her final claim of error, Snover contends that, when the trial court
valued the settlements for purposes of calculating the setoff, it should have
excluded the amount of the hospital’s settlement that the parties allocated to
the compromise of her minor son’s potential future wrongful death claim.
Because the settlement had been approved by the probate court, she argues
that it was impermissible for the trial court to treat her as the recipient of
funds that her son obtained from the settlement.
Correcting for these three asserted errors, Snover contends that the
trial court should have awarded her $6,426,844 in total damages, consisting
of $6,176,844 in economic damages (rather than $4,315,724) and $250,000 in
noneconomic damages (rather than $37,500). As explained below, we
conclude that she has not established a basis to disturb the judgment.
BACKGROUND
Snover sued Gupta, the hospital, and another doctor. The complaint
alleged that these defendants, all subject to MICRA, negligently diagnosed
and treated her, causing her to fall into a permanent coma. The hospital
settled for $2.5 million, from which Snover claims her son received $250,000
in exchange for waiving his right to bring a future wrongful death action. A
probate court order addressed the settlement between Snover and the
hospital and authorized the disbursement of $250,000 from that settlement to
her son. The other doctor, Neel Pandya, settled for $1 million. Excluding
4
$250,000 that went to Snover’s husband in exchange for dismissing his loss of
consortium claim and that the parties agree should not be counted, Snover
thus received a total of either $3 million or $3.25 million from the two
settlements, depending on whether one includes the $250,000 that the
hospital settlement allocated to her son.3
Trial proceeded solely against Gupta. In a special verdict, the jury
awarded Snover $17,458,474 in total damages: $7,458,474 in economic
damages and $10 million in noneconomic damages. The jury allocated
responsibility for Snover’s injury as follows: 15 percent to Gupta, 80 percent
to Pandya, and 5 percent to a nurse, Virginia Lozano.
After the verdict, the principal dispute concerned how the court should
reduce Gupta’s liability to account for Snover’s prior settlements. Snover
argued that the court should divide the jury’s economic damages award of
$7,458,474 by its total award of $17,458,474, yielding a ratio of .42721, or
approximately 42.7 percent, and apply that percentage to a settlement value
of $3 million. Instead, consistent with the Mayes rule, the court first reduced
the noneconomic damage award from $10 million to $250,000 pursuant to
MICRA, for a total damage award of $7,708,474 ($7,458,474 in economic
damages plus $250,000 in noneconomic damages). The court then calculated
the ratio of economic damages to total damages as 96.7 percent ($7,458,474 in
3 The settlement agreement submitted to the probate court shows the
amount of the husband’s settlement with the hospital as $200,000 rather
than $250,000, but the parties’ papers in the trial court identified the value
as $250,000, and the trial court excluded that amount from the settlement.
We disregard the apparent discrepancy because on appeal the parties
continue to agree that $250,000 should be excluded for the husband’s
settlement; the only note of disagreement is that Snover wrote in her opening
brief that the $250,000 came from the settlement with Pandya, which Gupta
then pointed out was not supported by information in the record.
5
economic damages ÷ $7,708,474 × 100). Apparently rejecting Snover’s
argument that the $250,000 allocated to her son in the settlement with the
hospital should be excluded, the court determined that Gupta was entitled to
an offset of $3,142,750 from the settlements with the other defendants
($3.25 million × 96.7 percent). This calculation resulted in a total adjusted
award against Gupta of $4,315,724 in economic damages ($7,458,474 –
$3,142,750).
With respect to noneconomic damages, again, the court followed the
Gilman rule by applying the MICRA cap first, holding that Gupta was liable
for 15 percent, or $37,500, of the capped award. It rejected Snover’s
argument that Gupta was liable for $250,000 in noneconomic damages,
representing application of the cap to 15 percent of the jury’s $10 million
award.
The court entered judgment against Gupta consistent with these
calculations, in the amount of $4,353,225.
DISCUSSION
I.
Snover’s first claim of error asks us to reject the Gilman rule as
inconsistent with Rashidi.4 Because Gilman and Mayes (which followed and
applied Gilman) both relied on the Supreme Court’s account of the history
4 Gupta initially argued that Snover forfeited her claims of error
because she voluntarily submitted a proposed judgment that adopted the
approach now challenged without maintaining her earlier objections to it. At
oral argument, however, Gupta’s counsel volunteered that this argument was
not well taken, and we accept the concession. Snover was not required to
continue to object after the trial court had selected between the parties’
competing methodologies (see Mary M. v. City of Los Angeles (1991) 54 Cal.3d
202, 212–213; Norgart v. Upjohn Co. (1999) 21 Cal.4th 383, 403), and the
record does not show that the court was ever misinformed about Snover’s
position.
6
leading to the passage of Proposition 51 when they concluded that the
MICRA cap should be applied first, we start with a brief review of that
history as well. (See Gilman, supra, 231 Cal.App.3d at pp. 127–128; Mayes,
supra, 139 Cal.App.4th at pp. 1101–1102.)
A.
Prior to the adoption of comparative negligence principles in the mid-
1970s, the contributory negligence rule meant that a jury’s finding that a
plaintiff “was at all negligent, no matter how slight,” in bringing about the
injury would preclude the plaintiff “from obtaining any recovery whatsoever.”
(Evangelatos v. Superior Court (1988) 44 Cal.3d 1188, 1196 (Evangelatos).)
For defendants, by contrast, the joint and several liability rule meant that a
finding of even minimal negligence rendered them liable for all the damages,
“even if other concurrent tortfeasors had also been partially, or even
primarily, responsible for the injury.” (Ibid.) Moreover, “the governing rules
at the time gave the plaintiff unilateral authority to decide which defendant
or defendants were to be sued,” and a defendant “generally had no right to
bring other tortfeasors into the action, even if the other tortfeasors were
equally or more responsible.” (Id. at pp. 1196–1197.)
As Evangelatos further explained, two cases altered this common law
structure. First, in Li v. Yellow Cab Co. (1975) 13 Cal.3d 804, the court
adopted the comparative negligence doctrine to replace the contributory
negligence rule, so that a contributorily negligent plaintiff was no longer
barred recovery, “ ‘but the damages awarded shall be diminished in
proportion to the amount of negligence attributable to the person recovering.’
” (Evangeletos, supra, 44 Cal.3d at p. 1197.) Second, in American Motorcycle
Assn. v. Superior Court (1978) 20 Cal.3d 578, the court retained joint and
several liability, but allowed defendants to bring other tortfeasors into the
7
action through cross-complaints and to obtain equitable indemnity from other
defendants on a comparative fault basis, “thus permitting a fair
apportionment of damages among tortfeasors.” (Evangeletos, at p. 1197.)
Notwithstanding these and other related developments, “the retention
of the common law joint and several liability doctrine produced some
situations in which defendants who bore only a small share of fault for an
accident could be left with the obligation to pay all or a large share of the
plaintiff’s damages if other more culpable tortfeasors were insolvent.”
(Evangeletos, supra, 44 Cal.3d at p. 1198.) Proposition 51 was intended to
address this issue. “While recognizing the potential inequity in a rule which
would require an injured plaintiff who may have sustained considerable
medical expenses and other damages as a result of an accident to bear the
full brunt of the loss if one of a number of tortfeasors should prove insolvent,
the drafters of the initiative at the same time concluded that it was unfair in
such a situation to require a tortfeasor who might only be minimally culpable
to bear all of the plaintiff’s damages. As a result, the drafters crafted a
compromise solution: Proposition 51 retains the traditional joint and several
liability doctrine with respect to a plaintiff’s economic damages, but adopts a
rule of several liability for noneconomic damages, providing that each
defendant is liable for only that portion of the plaintiff’s noneconomic
damages which is commensurate with that defendant’s degree of fault for the
injury.” (Ibid.)
As the Supreme Court later explained, “The express purpose of
Proposition 51 was to eliminate the perceived unfairness of imposing ‘all the
damage’ on defendants who were ‘found to share [only] a fraction of the fault.’
(§ 1431.1, subd. (b).) In this context, the only reasonable construction of
section 1431.2 is that a ‘defendant[’s]’ liability for noneconomic damages
8
cannot exceed his or her proportionate share of fault as compared with all
fault responsible for the plaintiff’s injuries, not merely that of ‘defendant[s]’
present in the lawsuit.” (DaFonte v. Up-Right, Inc. (1992) 2 Cal.4th 593, 603
(DaFonte).) But although the problem to which Proposition 51 responded
arose principally when another tortfeasor was insolvent, its application is not
limited to the situation “when insolvency prevents some tortfeasors from
contributing their fair share of damages.” (Ibid.) Rather, it “ ‘quite clearly is
simply intended to limit the potential liability of an individual defendant for
noneconomic damages to a proportion commensurate with that defendant’s
personal share of fault.’ ” (Ibid. [quoting Evangelatos, supra, 44 Cal.3d at
p. 1204.) As Gilman put it, “a defendant is not liable for that portion of
noneconomic damages attributable to a joint or concurrent tortfeasor, even if
the other tortfeasor is insolvent, or is not named as a defendant, or is immune,
or, for some other reason is beyond the jurisdiction of the court.” (Gilman,
supra, 231 Cal.App.3d at pp. 127–128, italics added.)
B.
In Gilman, the sole defendant was a nursing home. The jury found
that the total noneconomic damages were $400,000, and that the decedent’s
treating physician (who was not named as a defendant) was 10 percent at
fault. (Gilman, supra, 231 Cal.App.3d at p. 126.) Thus, the question was
whether the nursing home was liable for $250,000 (taking 90 percent of
$400,000, or $360,000, and then applying the MICRA cap to that amount), or
only $225,000 (90 percent of the MICRA-capped award). (Id. at p. 128.) The
plaintiff argued that two cases required the former approach: McAdory v.
Rogers (1989) 215 Cal.App.3d 1273 (McAdory) and Atkins v. Strayhorn (1990)
223 Cal.App.3d 1380, 1393 (Atkins). The Gilman court found those cases
distinguishable because neither one involved multiple tortfeasors subject to
9
MICRA; instead, the jury found that the plaintiffs’ own negligence
contributed to their injuries, and the defendants argued that the court should
first cap the damages award pursuant to MICRA and then reduce it further
by the plaintiffs’ comparative fault under Li v. Yellow Cab Co., supra,
13 Cal.3d 804. Reasoning from the premise that the jury’s award, rather
than the MICRA cap, is the true measure of the plaintiff’s noneconomic loss,
McAdory and Atkins held that the plaintiff’s comparative fault should instead
be applied to the jury’s (uncapped) noneconomic damages award, with the
MICRA cap then applied if the resulting amount still exceeded $250,000. If
the plaintiff’s noneconomic loss as determined by the jury and reduced by the
plaintiff’s comparative fault did not exceed the MICRA cap, there was no
need to reduce it further to ensure, as Li requires, that the plaintiffs did not
recover for a portion of the injury caused by their own negligence. (McAdory,
at p. 1278; Atkins, supra, 223 Cal.App.3d at p. 1393.)
As the Gilman court wrote, “[n]either McAdory nor Atkins dealt with
the interplay between Proposition 51 and the MICRA cap.” (Gilman, supra,
231 Cal.App.3d at p. 126.) Under Proposition 51, Gilman explained, the
liability of any tortfeasor cannot depend on the presence or absence of other
tortfeasors as defendants in the lawsuit or their ability to pay. (Id. at p. 128.)
As the court illustrated with a series of hypotheticals, when the jury
apportions liability among different tortfeasors, all of whom are subject to
MICRA, the only way to adhere to Proposition 51 is by applying the cap first,
such that the total liability of all of them together does not exceed it—i.e.,
regardless of whether some of them are absent or unable to pay. Plaintiffs
argued, for example, that if both the nursing home and the doctor had been
named as defendants, but the doctor was insolvent, it would do no violence to
either MICRA or Proposition 51 to collect the full $250,000 from the nursing
10
home—presumably on the theory that plaintiffs would obtain no more than
the cap (in accordance with MICRA) and the nursing home would not be held
liable for more than its 90 percent share of the noneconomic damages of
$400,000 (in accordance with Proposition 51). (Gilman, supra,
231 Cal.App.3d at p. 128.) The court responded: “However, it would do
violence to Proposition 51 to condition a defendant’s liability for noneconomic
damages upon whether other tortfeasors are solvent or not. It was precisely
this inequity that Proposition 51 was intended to remedy. To apply plaintiffs’
analysis would result in [the nursing home] owing an additional $40,000
simply because a concurrent tortfeasor, whose act of medical malpractice
contributed to the plaintiffs’ injury, was insolvent or not named in the
lawsuit.” (Id. at pp. 128–129.)
Mayes differed from Gilman in that it involved a settlement; all
defendants were subject to MICRA and some of them settled for a total of
$650,000 before trial. (Mayes, supra, 139 Cal.App.4th at p. 1098.)5 The jury
awarded $3 million in noneconomic damages and found that the settling
doctors were 80 percent responsible and the remaining defendants 20 percent
responsible. (Id. at p. 1087.) Following Gilman, the court concluded that the
trial court properly held the nonsettling defendants liable for $50,000 in
noneconomic damages, rather than $250,000 (based on application of the
MICRA cap to 20 percent of $3 million, or $650,000). (Id. at p. 1102.) After
quoting the Supreme Court’s statement that a defendant’s liability “ ‘ cannot
exceed his or her proportionate share of fault as compared with all fault
5 The suit was against “several physicians and nurses and their
institutions who had been involved in Mrs. Mayes’s treatment, including
Dr. David C. Bryan, M.D. and Hill Medical Corporation.” (Mayes, supra,
139 Cal.App.4th at p. 1079.) All but Dr. Bryan and Hill Medical Corporation
settled before trial. (Id., at p. 1098, fn. 13.)
11
responsible for the plaintiff’s injuries, not merely that of ‘defendant[s]’ present
in the lawsuit” ’ ” (DaFonte, supra, 2 Cal.4th at p. 603), the court agreed with
Gilman that McAdory and Atkins were irrelevant because they did not
involve Proposition 51. (Mayes, at p. 1102.) To hold the nonsettling
defendants liable up to the full MICRA cap because other defendants had
settled and were no longer before the court would run afoul of the rule under
Proposition 51 that “[p]laintiffs should bear the burden of undercontribution
of the settling parties.” (Mayes, at p. 1103, citing DaFonte, at p. 604, fn. 6.)
In cases in which the other tortfeasors found to be partially responsible
are not subject to MICRA, by contrast, courts have concluded that there is no
reason to cap the award before applying the defendant’s percentage of fault.
In Francies v. Kapla (2005) 127 Cal.App.4th 1381 (Francies), the plaintiff
sued his doctor for disclosing his medical condition to his employer and had
previously recovered from the employer in a wrongful termination action and
workers’ compensation proceedings. The doctor was found to be two-thirds at
fault, with the remaining third allocated to the employer. The court
concluded that the doctor’s two-thirds responsibility should be applied to the
total noneconomic damages of $425,000 (resulting in liability of $283,000,
then capped at $250,000), rather than to the MICRA-capped award. (Id. at
pp. 1388–1389.) In that context, the court observed, McAdory and Atkins
supplied the appropriate rule because the only difference was that the
doctor’s share of the fault “must be reduced to reflect the responsibility of a
third party rather than of the plaintiff himself,” and “MICRA provides no
justification for reducing the damages for which he may be held liable below
that amount because a third party to whom MICRA does not apply was also
partially at fault.” (Id. at p. 1388, italics added.) The court distinguished
Gilman on the ground that, in that case, “the third party who shared
12
responsibility for the plaintiff’s injury was also a health care provider,
making it necessary, in effect, to apportion the $250,000 MICRA limit.” (Id.
at p. 1389.)
Similarly, in Bigler-Engler v. Breg, Inc. (2017) 7 Cal.App.5th 276
(Bigler-Engler), the court followed Francies where the jury returned a verdict
against three defendants, only one of whom was subject to MICRA. (Id. at
p. 328.) Although the other tortfeasors in Bigler-Engler were parties, rather
than a non-party as in Francies, the court found the difference irrelevant
because in both cases there was only one tortfeasor subject to the cap. (Ibid.)
Like Francies, however, the court acknowledged that the cap must be applied
first in cases where there are multiple tortfeasors subject to MICRA, citing
Gilman and Mayes. (Ibid.)
C.
Rashidi involved a plaintiff who sued his treating physician, a hospital,
and a medical device manufacturer (which was not subject to MICRA), and
settled with the latter two defendants. In the trial against the doctor, the
jury made no findings about the percentage fault of the settling defendants,
and awarded over $1.3 million in noneconomic damages, which the trial court
reduced to $250,000. The question before the Supreme Court was whether
the capped noneconomic damages award “may be further diminished by
setting off the amount of a pretrial settlement attributable to noneconomic
losses, even when the defendant who went to trial failed to establish the
comparative fault of the settling defendant.” (Rashidi, supra, 60 Cal.4th at
p. 720.) The court said no, observing that “[i]t would be anomalous to allow a
defendant to obtain a setoff against damages for which he is solely liable.”
(Ibid.)
13
The Court of Appeal had reasoned that MICRA limits a plaintiff’s total
recovery for noneconomic losses to $250,000 whether in court or outside of it,
and therefore that if a plaintiff settles with another tortfeasor who is subject
to MICRA, any portion of the settlement attributable to noneconomic losses
must be deducted from the capped damages award notwithstanding the
nonsettling defendant’s failure to prove any degree of fault on the part of the
settling defendant. (Rashidi, supra, 60 Cal.4th at p. 724.) The Court of
Appeal thus “concluded that MICRA, as the more specific statute, must be
read as an exception to section 1431.2’s more general limitation on liability
for noneconomic damages according to proportionate fault.” (Ibid.)
The Supreme Court disagreed that the MICRA cap applies to recoveries
obtained through settlement, drawing on the distinction between “losses” and
“damages”: Subdivision (a) of former section 3333.2 provided that “[i]n any
action for injury against a health care provider based on professional
negligence, the injured plaintiff shall be entitled to recover noneconomic
losses to compensate for pain, suffering, inconvenience, physical impairment,
disfigurement and other nonpecuniary damage,” whereas subdivision (b)
provided that “[i]n no action shall the amount of damages for noneconomic
losses exceed two hundred fifty thousand dollars ($250,000).” Noting that the
term “damages” is a “subset” of losses, and refers to “ ‘ “money ordered by a
court,” ’ ” Rashidi concluded that MICRA places no limits on the
“noneconomic losses” that may be recovered through a settlement. (Rashidi,
supra, 60 Cal.4th at p. 725.) Since the Legislature did not intend “to include
settlement recoveries in the cap on noneconomic damages,” the statute did
not require a court to offset against a capped noneconomic damages award
any amounts recovered for noneconomic losses through settlements. (Id. at
14
p. 726.) The conflict that the Court of Appeal perceived between the two
statutes therefore did not exist.
As the Supreme Court again emphasized at the end of the opinion,
however, the setoff was unwarranted because the doctor had failed to prove
that anyone else bore any responsibility for the plaintiff’s injury, meaning
that, contrary to Proposition 51, the Court of Appeal had allowed him “a
setoff against damages for which he alone was responsible.” (Rashidi, supra,
60 Cal.4th at p. 727.) The court added, however: “Had [the doctor]
established any degree of fault on his codefendants’ part at trial, he would
have been entitled to a proportionate reduction in the capped award of
noneconomic damages.” (Ibid.) Therein lies the problem for Snover’s
argument. Here, Gupta established that other tortfeasors were 85 percent at
fault, so by holding her liable for 15 percent of the capped award, the trial
court did exactly what Rashidi contemplates in that situation.
Snover points out that the court in Bigler-Engler found this statement
was dictum “since it expressed views on a factual situation not before the
Supreme Court (i.e., the result if the nonsettling defendant had proved fault
on the part of the settling defendants) and was therefore not necessary for its
decision.” (Bigler-Engler, supra, 7 Cal.App.5th at p. 330.) But Bigler-Engler
found the dictum unpersuasive only when read to mean that a defendant is
entitled to a proportionate reduction in the capped award even when the
other defendants are not subject to MICRA. It noted that the Supreme Court
did not expressly consider the significance of the fact that one of the settling
defendants in the case was not a health care provider subject to MICRA, and
a “line of appellate authorities”—like Francies—had already concluded that
there should be no reduction to a capped award of noneconomic damages
based on the fault of a third party to whom MICRA does not apply. (Ibid.)
15
Bigler-Engler declined to assume that, by making a statement in dictum that
was inconsistent with prior case law it did not mention, the Supreme Court
intended to overrule that authority.
But the situation is different here. When all defendants are subject to
MICRA, as in this case, the court’s dictum was consistent with the rule in
prior case law; indeed, the court cited Gilman in the opinion without any
disapproval. (Rashidi, supra, 60 Cal.4th at p. 723.) As Bigler-Engler noted,
“[a]s an intermediate appellate court, we do not lightly disregard dictum from
our Supreme Court.” (Bigler-Engler, supra, 7 Cal.App.5th at p. 330.) Thus,
even though we may not be bound by the statement in Rashidi, we will not
reach a result that is contrary to it without a persuasive showing that it is
incorrect, and—as Snover claims—inconsistent with the court’s actual
holding. We now explain why we conclude that Snover has failed to make
that showing.
D.
Snover rests her argument on two premises, both of which are correct.
The first is the same premise that drove the result in McAdory and Adkins
(and by extension in Francies and Bigler-Engler): Although MICRA limits
the amount of noneconomic damages that a plaintiff can recover, the jury’s
award of noneconomic damages is the actual measure of the plaintiff’s
noneconomic loss. (McAdory, supra, 215 Cal.App.3d at p. 1278; Atkins,
supra, 223 Cal.App.3d at p. 1393.) As the Supreme Court itself has
explained, “[t]he $250,000 cap . . . is not a legislative attempt to estimate the
true damages suffered by plaintiffs, but rather an attempt to control and
reduce medical malpractice insurance costs by placing a predictable, uniform
limit on the defendant’s liability for noneconomic damages.” (Salgado v.
County of Los Angeles (1998) 19 Cal.4th 629, 641.) The second premise comes
16
from Rashidi: The MICRA cap does not include any compensation for
noneconomic losses the plaintiff recovers through settlement. (Rashidi,
supra, 60 Cal.4th at p. 726.) Because the premises are correct, the question
is whether they warrant the conclusion Snover draws from them. As she
puts them together: Since (1) her actual noneconomic loss was $3 million and
Gupta was responsible for 15 percent of that loss (based on the jury’s
findings), and (2) anything Snover recovered for noneconomic losses in her
settlement with the hospital is not subject to the MICRA cap, it contravenes
neither MICRA nor Proposition 51 to hold Gupta liable for $250,000 in
noneconomic damages.
According to Snover, Gilman arrived at a different result based on a
premise that Rashidi has since qualified: “Under MICRA, where more than
one health care provider jointly contributes to a single injury, the maximum a
plaintiff may recover for noneconomic damages is $250,000.” (Gilman, supra,
231 Cal.App.3d at p. 128.) In her view, because Rashidi holds that this
statement is true only for court-ordered damages and not for settlement
recoveries, there is no reason to treat a settlement with a MICRA tortfeasor
differently from a settlement with a non-MICRA tortfeasor; both of them lie
outside MICRA’s scope. And when the other tortfeasors are not subject to
MICRA, the rule is that the nonsettling defendant’s proportionate
responsibility is applied to the jury’s uncapped noneconomic damages award,
with the cap then applied only if the resulting liability still exceeds it.
However, as quoted above, it was central to the courts’ reasoning in
both Gilman and Mayes that Proposition 51 does not permit a defendant’s
liability to vary depending on whether other tortfeasors found to be at fault
are currently before the court. (Gilman, supra, 123 Cal.App.3d at p. 128;
Mayes, supra, 139 Cal.App.4th at p. 1102.) While neither case considered an
17
argument that settlement recoveries are not subject to the MICRA cap, their
understanding of Proposition 51 likely would have rendered the point
irrelevant. To say that a defendant’s liability cannot be higher because other
tortfeasors are absent or unable to pay is to say that, for the purposes of
determining liability, the court must treat the defendant as if all other
identified tortfeasors are present and solvent. Here, if the hospital and both
doctors had gone to trial, the noneconomic damages would have been capped
at $250,000 pursuant to MICRA and would have been divided among them
based on the jury’s allocation of fault, with Gupta liable only for $37,500. It
was thus incumbent on Snover to explain either why this understanding of
Proposition 51 is incorrect, or why the imposition of greater liability on Gupta
is permissible under it simply because other tortfeasors the jury identified as
partially responsible for Snover’s injury were no longer “present in the
lawsuit.” (DaFonte, supra, 2 Cal.4th at p. 603.)
Snover fails to address this issue because she locates the problem
elsewhere: She contends that Gilman “presupposes that Section 3333.2 is a
legislative determination of damages.” But this contention is unexplained,
and we see no such presupposition in the opinion. While Gilman
distinguished McAdory on the ground that the case did not involve
Proposition 51, it nowhere disagreed with McAdory’s statement that the
jury’s award of noneconomic damages, rather than the MICRA cap, is the
actual measure of the plaintiff’s loss. Rather, as we have explained, the
Gilman rule was based on the court’s understanding that, under
Proposition 51, a tortfeasor’s liability for noneconomic damages does not
change depending on whether other tortfeasors responsible for the injury are
present in the lawsuit.
18
Without more, then, there is no inconsistency between Rashidi’s
holding that the MICRA cap does not apply to settlement recoveries and its
dictum that, under Proposition 51, when the jury has allocated responsibility
among multiple tortfeasors, the percentage fault of a nonsettling defendant
must be applied to the capped award (at least if the other tortfeasors are
health care providers subject to MICRA). Nor does there appear to be any
inconsistency between Rashidi’s endorsement of the Gilman rule and
Salgado’s holding that the jury’s award, rather than the MICRA cap, is the
measure of the plaintiff’s noneconomic loss. Accordingly, Snover has not
persuaded us that we should depart from the Gilman rule and disregard the
Supreme Court’s dictum in Rashidi.
II.
We turn now to the Mayes rule, which the trial court applied to
determine the amount of the pretrial settlements to be applied as setoff
against the jury’s award of economic damages. (Code Civ. Proc., § 877.) To
recap, under Proposition 51 it is necessary to allocate settlements between
economic and noneconomic damages because joint liability exists only for
economic damages, so “ ‘only the amount attributable to the joint
responsibility for economic damages may be used as an offset.’ ” (Rashidi,
supra, 60 Cal.4th at p. 722.) Or as Espinoza explained, because “each
defendant is solely responsible for his or her share of the noneconomic
damages,” to use any portion of the settlement attributable to noneconomic
damages as a setoff “would, in effect, cause money paid in settlement to be
treated as if it was paid as a joint liability.” (Espinoza, supra, 9 Cal.App.4th
at pp. 276–277.)
Under Espinoza’s methodology, the court calculates the percentage of
the jury’s total award that was allocated to economic damages, and then
19
applies the same percentage to the settlements to determine the setoff.
(Espinoza, supra, 9 Cal.App.4th at pp. 276–277.) The problem to which
Espinoza responds is that settling parties rarely allocate the proceeds
between economic and noneconomic losses, and even if they did so, their
allocation would be “inherently suspect” as a basis for determining a setoff.
(Greathouse v. Amcord, Inc. (1995) 35 Cal.App.4th 831, 841.) That is because
“[t]he negotiated allocation between economic and non-economic damages will
inevitably reflect a bias against economic damages that is prejudicial to a
nonsettling defendant. The plaintiff has an interest in allocating as little as
possible of the settlement to economic damages; the smaller the allocation to
economic damages, the less the nonsettling defendants can claim as a credit
against a verdict or judgment in the plaintiff’s favor. [Citation.] The settling
defendants have no incentive to oppose the plaintiff’s allocation because they
are entirely unaffected by it.” (Ibid.) The Espinoza methodology “eliminates
this kind of bargaining at the non-settling defendant’s expense.” (Torres v.
Xomox Corp. (1996) 49 Cal.App.4th 1, 38 (Torres).)
Courts have recognized, however, that there are some circumstances in
which a departure from Espinoza is warranted. For example, if the plaintiff
dies after the settlement but before trial, the jury’s verdict may not supply an
appropriate allocation because damages for pain and suffering were available
at the time of settlement but not at the time of trial. (Ehret v. Congoleum
Corp. (1999) 73 Cal.App.4th 1308, 1319, 1322.) Or if a defendant settles after
the jury has rendered its verdict, so that both sides already know the
defendant’s actual liability, the portion of the settlement allocated to
noneconomic damages should not exceed the defendant’s liability established
by the jury’s verdict. (Torres, supra, 49 Cal.App.4th at pp. 39–42.)
Otherwise, the excess allocation to noneconomic damages would operate as a
20
“windfall” to the plaintiff, allowing the plaintiff to recover more from the
settlement and judgment together than the plaintiff would recover by
collecting the full amount of the judgment against the defendants in the
absence of a settlement. (Id. at p. 40.) “The prospect of such a windfall could
become a factor in settlement negotiations, with the plaintiff agreeing to
accept a lesser amount than it otherwise would because the shortfall could be
collected from the nonsettling defendant. Thus, one of the concerns which led
to adoption of the Espinoza approach for pre-verdict settlements—bargaining
at the expense of the non-settling defendants [citation]—suggests that a
different approach should be used for postverdict settlements.” (Ibid.)
The Mayes rule is another instance of a departure from the standard
application of the Espinoza formula; again, when both the settling and
nonsettling defendants are subject to MICRA, it requires the court to first
reduce the jury’s total award by applying the statutory cap to the non-
economic damages portion. (Mayes, supra, 139 Cal.App.4th at pp. 1102–
1103.) According to Snover, this approach rests on the same error she finds
in the Gilman rule; namely, it incorrectly assumes that the MICRA cap is the
actual measure of plaintiff’s noneconomic loss rather than a limitation on the
amount of any recovery at trial. But just as we were unpersuaded in our
discussion above that the Gilman rule requires such an assumption, we are
unpersuaded that the Mayes rule does either.
As we see it, the rule reflects the fact that, before deciding whether to
settle, all parties know that at trial no defendant’s liability for noneconomic
damages can exceed the MICRA cap. Rashidi explained that the MICRA cap
indirectly “restrains the size of settlements” because the settlement
negotiations “are based on liability estimates that are necessarily affected by
the cap.” (Rashidi, supra, 60 Cal.4th at p. 727.) Using the Espinoza
21
methodology without applying the MICRA cap would ignore this reality by
permitting the allocation of settlement dollars to noneconomic losses in an
amount far in excess of any defendant’s possible liability for them.6 Here, the
Espinoza methodology would treat 57.3% of the $3.25 million Snover received
from her settlements, or over $1.86 million, as noneconomic damages, which
is more than seven times the amount of the defendants’ maximum liability
under MICRA individually or collectively. When MICRA does not apply, the
Espinoza methodology results in an allocation between economic and
noneconomic losses that the settling parties themselves might reasonably
have made given the uncertainty that existed at the time and in the absence
of an ulterior motive to reduce any later setoff. (See Torres, supra,
49 Cal.App.4th at p. 39 [in a preverdict settlement, “the parties are dealing
with unknowns and the settlement is based on potential, rather than actual,
liability”].) But the same cannot be said when MICRA applies. Although the
settling defendant’s proportionate responsibility for noneconomic damages is
unknown, its maximum possible liability is established by the MICRA cap.
6 This is how we understand the Mayes court’s statement that a failure
to apply the MICRA cap before calculating the Espinoza percentage would
“run[] afoul of the care of Gilman to assure that the liability of an individual
defendant for noneconomic damages was limited to an amount commensurate
with that defendant’s personal share of fault.” (Mayes, supra,
139 Cal.App.4th at p. 1103.) We read this sentence to refer to the nonsettling
defendants’ proportionate share of the MICRA capped recovery against them,
but we note that the setoff under the Mayes rule is not tied to the
proportionate responsibility of each tortfeasor for noneconomic losses. The
amount of the setoff under the rule is the same regardless of whether or how
the jury allocated fault among the settling and nonsettling defendants. That
is equally true of the standard Espinoza methodology, consistent with the
rule that the defendants are jointly liable for economic damages regardless of
their share of fault. (See Hellam v. Crane Co. (2015) 239 Cal.App.4th 851,
866; Poire v. C.L. Peck/Jones Brothers Construction Corp. (1995)
39 Cal.App.4th 1832, 1838–1840.)
22
(Cf. ibid. [in a postverdict settlement, where the settling parties already
know the defendant’s liability for noneconomic damages, no more of the
settlement corresponding to that liability “could fairly be viewed as a
payment on account of that liability”].)
The problem of unrealistic allocations of settlement dollars to
noneconomic damages, driven by the plaintiff’s motive to reduce the amount
of any setoff, is precisely what the Espinoza methodology was intended to
avoid. To be sure, its use when MICRA applies would not be equivalent to
allowing the settling parties to invent an allocation at the nonsettling
defendant’s expense. But because MICRA caps all defendants’ liability for
noneconomic damages, the Espinoza methodology will foreseeably over-
allocate settlement proceeds to noneconomic losses, and thus artificially
reduce the amount of any setoff, whenever the jury awards noneconomic
damages in excess of the cap. This result is in tension with the purpose of
Code of Civil Procedure section 877 to prevent double recoveries (Schreiber v.
Lee (2020) 47 Cal.App.5th 745, 760) and, as discussed in Torres, supra,
49 Cal.App.4th at page 40, potentially skews the plaintiff’s settlement
incentives. Contrary to Snover’s argument, however, nothing in this
rationale for the Mayes rule requires an assumption that the MICRA cap
furnishes the actual measure of the plaintiff’s noneconomic loss; it merely
recognizes that parties deciding whether to settle, and for how much, will
take into account that the defendant’s liability for noneconomic damages will
be capped by the statute if they go to trial. (Rashidi, supra, 60 Cal.4th at
p. 727.)
The Mayes rule does not apply when the prior recoveries were not
obtained from health care providers covered by MICRA. In Francies, the
court pointed out that “the MICRA cap had no effect on the amounts
23
recovered either from Francies’s employer or as workers’ compensation
benefits,” so “the relevant ratio is the actual economic damages as a
percentage of the total damages suffered by Francies, not the ratio between
the economic damages and the amount of damages that Francies can recover
from [the doctor].” (Francies, supra, 127 Cal.App.4th at p. 1387.) And
although the setoff for economic damages was not before the Supreme Court
in Rashidi, it noted that the Court of Appeal had adopted two different
approaches for that calculation. For the settlement with the medical device
manufacturer (which was not a health care provider subject to MICRA), the
court calculated the economic damages award as a percentage of the jury’s
total award, whereas for the settlement with the hospital, it took the
economic damages award as a percentage of the total award after reducing
the noneconomic portion to the MICRA cap. (Rashidi, supra, 60 Cal.4th at
pp. 722–723.) Nothing in the Supreme Court’s opinion calls into question the
Court of Appeal’s approach to the economic damages setoff in either respect.7
Snover cites Collins v. County of San Diego (2021) 60 Cal.App.5th 1035
(Collins), in which the jury found in favor of the plaintiff on a negligence
claim against two deputies involved in his arrest and two nurses employed by
the county who attended to him while in jail. Before trial, the plaintiff
settled for $2.75 million with a hospital and four of its doctors on his cause of
action for professional negligence. (Id. at pp. 1045–1046.) The jury awarded
noneconomic damages of $8 million and economic damages of approximately
7 Under the logic of Francies and the Court of Appeal’s approach in
Rashidi, the decisive consideration appears to be whether the settling
defendants were subject to MICRA rather than whether the nonsettling
defendants were. We have no occasion to address that issue here because, as
in Mayes itself, in this case both the settling and nonsettling defendants are
subject to MICRA.
24
$4.6 million; it found that the two deputies together were 30 percent at fault
and the two nurses 70 percent, and was not asked to allocate the fault of the
settling parties. (Id. at p. 1046 & fn. 5.) Without objection, the trial court
reduced the nurses’ liability for noneconomic damages to $250,000 (applying
the MICRA cap to 70 percent of $8 million). For the setoff calculation,
however, the trial court declined to apply the MICRA cap when determining
the percentage of the total award allocated to economic damages. (Id. at
pp. 1063–1064.) The appellate court found no error in this approach. It
distinguished Mayes on the ground that all the defendants there, “both
settling and nonsettling, were subject to the MICRA limit,” and that, “distinct
from this case, the jury was also tasked with determining the settling
defendants’ proportionate liability.” (Id. at p. 1065.) It further reasoned that
the trial court’s approach was supported by Rashidi’s holding that the
MICRA cap does not apply to settlement recoveries. (Id. at pp. 1066–1067.)
It explained: “Unlike the calculation advanced by the Mayes appellant, the
calculation by the trial court here did not run afoul of either MICRA or
Proposition 51. The County defendants were not held liable for any portion of
noneconomic damages attributed to another defendant by the finder of fact,
and received the benefit of MICRA.” (Id. at p. 1067.)
While some language in Collins may lend support to Snover’s position,
in our view it does so only insofar as it is in tension with the other cases we
have discussed. While two of the nonsettling defendants—the deputies—
were not subject to MICRA, the nurses were, and the settling parties were
likewise health care providers covered by the statute. The court
distinguished Mayes in part on the ground that the Collins jury made no
finding of the percentage fault of the settling parties (Collins, supra,
60 Cal.App.5th at p. 1065), but the proportionate responsibility of the settling
25
parties in Mayes played no role in the Espinoza calculation: The court
reduced the total damages award to the MICRA cap, not to the portion of it
($50,000) for which the nonsettling defendants were held liable. The settling
and nonsettling defendants, all of whom were subject to MICRA, collectively
could not have been held liable for more than the MICRA capped recovery
against them, regardless of how or whether the jury allocated responsibility
among them. The court acknowledged that it “seems sensible that all of the
defendants that are subject to MICRA (including those that have already
settled) should be responsible for the same or similar percentage of economic
and noneconomic damages,” but ultimately rejected such an approach on the
grounds that a “settlement and a damage award are not the same” and
“[w]hat the trier of fact would have awarded Collins for the settling
defendants’ conduct, and what portion of fault it would have allocated to
them is entirely speculative.” (Collins, supra, 60 Cal.App.5th at p. 1067.)
Taking these points in turn: First, it is true that settlement recoveries
can be affected by additional factors such as the defendant’s desire to avoid
the expense of litigation and potential negative publicity (Collins, supra, 60
Cal.App.5th at p. 1067), but while these considerations could lead a settling
party to pay somewhat more than its estimate of its likely total liability at
trial, they would not cause it to assume that its potential liability for
noneconomic damages could exceed the MICRA cap. (See Rashidi, supra, 60
Cal.4th at p. 727.) Second, the premise of joint liability, and of the setoff
under Code of Civil Procedure section 877, is that, regardless of whether all
tortfeasors are present, the plaintiff has suffered “ ‘one indivisible injury’ ” for
which the “jury verdict determined ‘the total amount of damages.’ ”
(Greathouse v. Amcord, Inc., supra, 35 Cal.App.4th at p. 840.) Thus, we see
no legal reason to speculate about whether the jury would have awarded
26
additional damages based on the conduct of the settling defendants. Third,
as noted above, the jury’s allocation of proportionate responsibility to the
settling parties did not affect the Espinoza calculation in Mayes, and more
generally has no impact on the amount of any setoff against the award of
economic damages. As in Mayes, if the settling parties in Collins had instead
gone to trial, the noneconomic damages for all of them and the nurses
together would have been capped at $250,000.
Lastly, we note that the only alternatives presented in the trial court
and on appeal were the Mayes rule and the Espinoza methodology (i.e.,
unadjusted by application of the MICRA cap to the jury’s award), so we have
no occasion to consider whether there are other possible approaches to the
problem. For the reasons we have discussed, Snover has not persuaded us
that the unadjusted Espinoza methodology is preferable to the Mayes rule
when all tortfeasors are health care providers subject to MICRA.
III.
Finally, we take up Snover’s argument that, when valuing her
settlement with the hospital, the trial court should have excluded the
$250,000 allocated to settle her son’s potential future wrongful death claim
because the settlement had been approved by the probate court. Gupta
responds that the probate court’s order does not constitute approval of any
settlement with Snover’s son and that the trial court was not required to
exclude the $250,000 if Snover failed to carry her burden to show that the
amount was reasonable and the product of adequately adversarial
negotiations. (See Jones v. John Crane, Inc. (2005) 132 Cal.App.4th 990,
1009–1011 (Jones).) We find no abuse of discretion.
The caption of the probate court order has the box checked for “person
with a disability,” rather than the box for “minor,” and the box checked for
27
“compromise of pending action,” making it, in full, an order approving the
compromise of a pending action for a person with a disability. The box for
“disputed claim,” which would be used for a potential action such as a
wrongful death claim that had not yet accrued, was not checked. Additional
boxes on the front page refer to Snover as the claimant, with the boxes
“adult” and a “person with a disability” checked. Snover’s son is a minor, not
an adult, and it does not appear from the record that he is a person with a
disability.
The order goes on to list disbursements from the total $2.5 million
settlement for various expenses and recipients, including for attorneys’ fees,
medical fee reimbursements, and the payment of a medical lien. Within the
list of disbursements, the order refers to the $250,000 disbursement to
Snover’s son in two places. The first reference is under a heading titled:
“Other authorized disbursements payable directly to third parties.” It states:
“$250,000 is to be allocated to [the son] . . . for his waiver of potential
wrongful death claim to be paid by way of an annuity purchased by [the
hospital].” The second reference is in an attachment describing the “amount
and terms of settlement,” which states that the total settlement amount is
$2,500,000, lists various disbursements from that amount, and describes
details of the purchase of an annuity for the son using the $250,000. The
order states that the undistributed remainder of $745,000 is to be used to
purchase an annuity and to establish a trust, both for Snover’s benefit.
In sum, the order appears only to have granted Snover’s petition for
approval of her settlement with the hospital, not to have approved an
agreement between the hospital and her son. Her son was not a party to the
action and no settlement agreement with him was submitted to the probate
court. Snover has not identified any authority establishing that the probate
28
court, in order to approve the hospital’s settlement with her, was required to
find that the amount allocated to her son was a reasonable compromise of his
interest in a potential future wrongful death claim or to make any other
particular finding about the purported settlement with her son. Albeit
without citing authority, Snover does assert that, because her son is a minor,
“[a]ny compromise of his right to file an action must be approved by the
court.” While we accept that the settlement of a minor’s action or claim
requires court approval (Code Civ. Proc., § 372, subd. (a)(3); Prob. Code,
§ 3500, subd. (b)), Snover offers no argument or authority that any approval
required here either was or properly could have been obtained by the filing of
a petition that, on its face, sought the probate court’s approval only of a
settlement with her (as a person with a disability) for a pending action to
which her son was not a party. Snover also does not show that she otherwise
sought or obtained a good-faith determination of the settlement with the
hospital. (Code Civ. Proc., § 877.6.) In the absence of such circumstances,
“the trial court was not bound by the allocations made” in the agreement.
(Jones, supra, 132 Cal.App.4th at p. 1009.)
“ ‘[W]here an allocation is made of settlement proceeds which will affect
the ultimate setoff or credit that a nonsettling defendant will receive against
any future judgment, the allocation may not be given presumptive effect
unless it was the product of adverse negotiation.’ [Citation.] Ordinarily
‘settling defendants . . . are not in an adversarial position with plaintiffs as to
the allocation of settlement proceeds to separate causes of action. While
plaintiffs have an interest in allocating as large an amount as possible to
causes of action[] in which there are no nonsettling defendants, the settling
defendants will be released of further claims against them regardless of the
allocation and thus have no [other relevant] interest in the allocation of the
29
settlement proceeds . . . .’ [Citation.] Accordingly, ‘[w]here the settling
parties have agreed to allocate less than all of the settlement amount to a
portion of the causes of action, an evidentiary showing is required to justify
such allocation.’ ” (Jones, supra, 132 Cal.App.4th at pp. 1009–1010.) A party,
like Snover, who “seek[s] to rely on the allocation ‘must explain to the court
and to all other parties, by declaration or other written form, the evidentiary
basis for any allocations and valuations made, and must demonstrate that
the allocation was reached in a sufficiently adversarial manner to justify the
presumption that a reasonable valuation was reached.’ ” (Id. at p. 1010.)
The trial court has “wide discretion in allocating prior settlement
recoveries to claims not adjudicated at trial.” (Jones, supra, 132 Cal.App.4th
at 1008.) Snover does not point to any evidentiary showing in the record to
satisfy her duty under Jones to prove that the amount disbursed to her son
was reasonable and arrived at in a sufficiently adversarial proceeding that it
should be deducted from the hospital’s settlement with her. This is therefore
not a case where the plaintiff presented “a significant amount of evidence”
supporting the allocation of settlement funds to claims specified in pretrial
settlement agreements. (Hellam v. Crane Co., supra, 239 Cal.App.4th at
pp. 860–862 [affirming the trial court’s subtraction of settlement amounts
from the total offsets granted the nonsettling defendant].) Instead, it is more
like Jones, where the court of appeal affirmed the trial court’s refusal “to
allocate any portion of the prior settlements to a potential wrongful death
action” because the plaintiffs had presented no evidence to meet their burden
to show that the allocations set forth in the settlement agreements were
reasonable and “based on an individualized consideration of the potential
claims of [the decedent’s] heirs.” (Jones, at pp. 1010–1011.) In short, absent
a showing of reasonableness or a finding of good faith, Gupta was “entitled to
30
a setoff of the entire settlement figure.” (Knox v. County of Los Angeles
(1980) 109 Cal.App.3d 825, 836.) Snover has not shown that the trial court
abused its discretion in declining to deduct the $250,000 distributed to her
son for purposes of the offset calculation.
DISPOSITION
The judgment is affirmed. Gupta is entitled to recover her costs on
appeal.
GOLDMAN, J.
WE CONCUR:
BROWN, P. J.
STREETER, J.
31
Trial Court: Riverside County Superior Court
Trial Judge: Honorable Irma Asberry
Counsel for Plaintiff and The Stevens Firm, Steven B. Stevens
Appellant: Law Offices of Bruce G. Fagel &
Associates, Bruce G. Fagel
Counsel for Defendant and Wood, Smith, Henning & Berman,
Respondent: Steven R. Disharoon
32