Hargrove v. Legacy Healthcare, Inc., No. E76240 (July 1, 2022)
This is a PAGA case where the plaintiff died four years into the case. Dead Plaintiff’s lawyers moved to amend and swap in a New Plaintiff, which they viewed as necessary to avoid statute of limitations issues that would arise if they just filed a new case. The trial court denied the motion and dismissed the case. New Plaintiff appealed.
There’s a threshold issue about New Plaintiff’s standing to appeal. Generally appellate standing requires the appellant to be a “party aggrieved.” See Code Civ. Proc. § 902. That has two parts: (1) the appellant needs to be a party. Like, in the caption. So, for instance, unnamed members of a class who object to a class action settlement are not parties. And (2) is aggrieved. As in hurt by the judgment or order being appealed. There is, however, and exception to (1): you can appeal without being a party if you tried to become a party by moving to intervene but were rebuffed in that effort by the trial court. New Plaintiff didn’t officially do that here. But the Court of Appeal exercises its discretion to treat her amendment motion as an unsuccessful effort at permissive intervention. Which resolves the standing question.
On the merits, the Court of Appeal finds that New Plaintiff couldn’t sub in for Dead Plaintiff and her claim wouldn’t relate back. At the time Dead Plaintiff gave notice to the LWDA, New Plaintiff was not even an employee yet, so she wouldn’t have had standing to bring Dead Plaintiff’s PAGA claim. That purportedly distinguishes the facts of this case from.Hutcheson v. Superior Court, 74 Cal.App.5th 932, 935 (2022), which permitted both a substitution and relation back under facts where the new plaintiff would have had standing to bring the original plaintiff’s claim.
Affirmed.