Southern California Edison Co. v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co.

Plaintiff appeals from the judgment of dismissal entered upon the sustaining of general and special demurrers of the defendant insurance companies to its complaint, the general demurrers being sustained without leave to amend.

In the complaint plaintiff sought declaratory relief, an injunction and damages against the three named insurance companies and a number of their insureds. It is alleged that the insured defendants at different times and places damaged plaintiff’s property (telephone poles) through the negligent operation of their respective motor vehicles. An exhibit attached to the complaint lists 17 such accidents for which plaintiff has made claims for damages. On some of the claims suits have been filed in the municipal court and the actions are now pending.

Plaintiff further alleges that, as part of the damages recoverable on each claim, it is entitled to certain overhead expenses, namely, the costs of tools used to make the repairs, the costs of supervision and administrative expenses; that the defendant insurance companies have admitted their responsibility, by reason of the acts of their insureds, to reimburse plaintiff for its claims but have rejected the claims upon the sole ground that the tool, supervision and administrative expenses are not proper elements of recoverable damages; that plaintiff has refused to accept the amounts offered in settlement of these claims which do not include these overhead expenses and, on some of the claims, has commenced suit to recover the full amounts; in the past, in the majority of actions plaintiff has instituted, it has recovered either at the trial or on appeal the total amount of its claimed damages.

The complaint contains the additional allegations that defendant insurance companies have adopted a course of tactics designed to discourage plaintiff from recovering that to which it is entitled by conducting repeated discovery proceedings in which identical information is sought, by continually questioning the method of proving the disputed items of damage and by refusing to pay the full amounts due, thus forcing plaintiff to litigate each claim notwithstanding adverse judicial decisions on previous cases involving similar claims. Such

Plaintiff makes the argument that the declaration sought would prevent a multiplicity of suits and is in the nature of a bill of peace. The ancient equitable action referred to provides a remedy to prevent duplication of trial effort and expense in situations where a plaintiff asserts a claim against numerous defendants and where the legal remedy of consolidation of eases is not available because the causes of action or parties were not joinable, some of the actions were not yet filed, or those filed were in different courts. (See Witkin, Cal. Procedure (1954) p. 1136.) To invoke such relief the courts have required a showing that plaintiff’s claims have arisen from a common relationship or source. (Schroeter v. Abbott, 185 Cal. 146 , 151 [ 196 P. 39 ]; Ritchie v. Dorland, 6 Cal. 33 .) The defendant insureds in the case at bench are entirely independent and have no relationship to one another.

But even more damaging to plaintiff’s theory that it is entitled to relief in the form of a bill of peace, is the fact that, if plaintiff was given the declaration sought, it would not dispose of any of the actions. It would simply carve out one issue. Among other things, plaintiff would still have the burr