Watson v. Knorr
Plaintiffs Hiroko M. Watson, Mary Watson, and Madeline Watson, (hereafter jointly Plaintiffs) are the widow and daughters of decedent David Watson. Plaintiffs filed a complaint against Dr. Andrew Knorr and the Monterey Bay Urology Associates (jointly Defendants) for medical malpractice and wrongful death resulting from Dr. Knorr’s treatment of David Watson. The parties subsequently stipulated to binding contractual arbitration in accordance with the arbitration agreement David Watson signed prior to treatment. At arbitration, Plaintiffs were awarded $1,092,797, plus “costs in accordance with the California Code of Civil Procedure.†Plaintiffs petitioned the court to confirm the award; in their response, Defendants challenged the award of costs, arguing that the arbitration agreement required the parties to bear their own costs. The trial court corrected the award by removing the award of costs and confirmed the award as corrected. Plaintiff moved for reconsideration (Code Civ. Proc., § 1008),[1] arguing that they were entitled to costs pursuant to Code of Civil Procedure section 998 and prejudgment interest (Civ. Code, § 3291) because the Defendants rejected Plaintiffs’ offer to compromise. The court denied the motion for reconsideration. Plaintiffs appeal.
We conclude that since the parties submitted the question of costs to arbitration, it was for the arbitrators to determine both the entitlement to and the amount of costs to be awarded. Since this case does not meet any of the statutory grounds for correcting the award, the trial court could not correct the award, by either deleting the award of costs or determining the amount of costs, rendering the costs award a legal nullity. We hold that Plaintiffs should have presented their section 998 costs claim to the arbitrators and that they forfeited their Civil Code section 3291 prejudgment interest claim by failing to raise it in their petition to confirm the arbitration award. We conclude, however, that the trial court improperly denied Plaintiffs their costs related to the proceedings in the trial court (§ 1293.2) and will reverse the judgment and remand for the purpose of awarding those costs.
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