TENTATIVE RULING

Judge Thomas Anderle
Department 3 SB-Anacapa
1100 Anacapa Street
P.O. Box 21107 
Santa Barbara, CA  93121-1107

CIVIL LAW & MOTION

Nature of Proceedings: Motion Tax Cost

Defendant Cliff View Terrace’s Motion to Strike Memorandum of Costs or, 
Alternatively, to Tax Costs
			      
Ruling

The court grants plaintiff Sylvia Saucedo’s motion to strike defendant Cliff View Terrace 
Inc.’s memorandum of costs in its entirety.

Analysis

Cliff View Terrace’s argument that it is entitled to costs lacks merit on many levels. First, 
Cliff View is not a prevailing party.

“Prevailing party” includes the party with a net monetary recovery, a defendant in whose 
favor a dismissal is entered, a defendant where neither plaintiff nor defendant obtains any 
relief, and a defendant as against those plaintiffs who do not recover any relief against that 
defendant. When any party recovers other than monetary relief and in situations other than 
as specified, the "prevailing party" shall be as determined by the court, and under those 
circumstances, the court, in its discretion, may allow costs or not and, if allowed may 
apportion costs between the parties on the same or adverse sides pursuant to rules 
adopted under Section 1034.

CCP § 1032(a)(4). Cliff View did not obtain any monetary recovery; there was no dismissal 
in favor of Cliff View; and plaintiff did obtain relief against defendant, in fact, plaintiff obtained 
the net monetary recovery in this case. Cliff View did not obtain “other than monetary relief” 
such as to warrant the court exercising its discretion to dub Cliff View a prevailing party.

Plaintiff is right that Cliff View’s reliance on Michell v. Olick is misplaced. In that case, only 
Michell’s cross-complaint went to a jury trial, the jury awarded her $63,000 on one cause of 
action, and the jury found no liability on her other causes of action. Michell v. Olick, supra, 
49 Cal.App.4th at 1196. Because Michell was entitled to costs for prevailing on one cause 
of action, it does not follow that Olick is entitled to costs for prevailing on the other causes 
of action.

Even if the court were to find Cliff View was a limited prevailing party, Cliff View’s own 
arguments demonstrate that no costs were necessary to the defense of the patients’ rights 
claims that were not also necessary to the defense of the other claims on which plaintiff 
prevailed. Cliff View says that plaintiff filed “numerous and indistinguishable causes of 
action.” 

Thus, in order for defendant to successfully defend itself in any of the causes of action, it 
would reasonably and understandably be incurring fees that would be useful in defending 
the other causes of action. Because of the convoluted nature of the causes of action 
brought by plaintiff against defendant …, those costs ‘reasonably necessary’ to the defense 
of the successful 1430(b) cause of action include the costs incurred in the defense of the 
unsuccessful cause of action.

[Opp. 3:19-25] Cliff view also states that “evidence proffered by the defense at the jury trial 
helped defendant … to substantiate and develop the defense of the 1430(b) claim.” [Opp. 
5:9-10]

Cliff View suggests that even if it did not have to defend against the successful claims, it 
would have incurred the same costs. But Cliff View has it backwards. Clearly it is not 
entitled to costs incurred in defense of the claims on which plaintiff was successful. The 
question is: what did Cliff View expend in defense of the patients’ rights claims in addition to 
what it spent in its unsuccessful defense. Cliff View does not argue one single dime. On 
the contrary, it forcefully argues that all costs were incurred in defending all causes of 
action. Consequently, plaintiff’s unsuccessful claim did not cause Cliff View to incur any 
costs that it did not already incur in defending plaintiff’s successful claims.

Cliff View is right that the ruling on Michael Murphy’s memorandum of costs is not relevant 
to Cliff View’s costs, except that the court taxed $77,135 of the gross amount of $148,496 
as not reasonable and necessary to the defense of any claims or as otherwise not 
statutorily recoverable. The court awarded Murphy only $3,568.05 in costs because the 
vast majority of the allowable costs would have been expended by Cliff View even if Murphy 
had not been a defendant. What distinguishes Murphy’s memorandum of costs is that he 
was a defendant against whom plaintiff did not recover any relief. In short, he was a 
prevailing party. Cliff View is not. The court will grant plaintiff’s motion.