In Valdez v. Seidner-Miller, Inc., ___ Cal.App.5th ___ (Mar. 27, 2019), the Court of Appeal (Second Appellate District, Division Seven) considered Civil Code section 1782, which states that a CLRA action for damages cannot be maintained unless (a) the plaintiff has made an appropriate pre-filing demand that the defendant "correct, repair, replace, or otherwise rectify" the violation; and (b) the defendant failed to "give" the consumer "an appropriate correction, repair, replacement, or other remedy ... within 30 days after receipt of the notice."
As a preliminary matter, the Court considered what happens if "30 days after receipt of the notice" falls on a Saturday or other "holiday." Under Code of Civil Procedure section 12a, the Court held, the defendant has until the following business day to respond. Hence, the defendant's offer, made 32 days "after receipt of the notice," was timely. Slip op. at 14-16 & n.13.
Next, the Court held that the defendant's correction offer, which took the form of a detailed proposed settlement agreement, "was not an appropriate correction offer as contemplated by section 1782, subdivision (b)" because the offered relief was conditioned on the plaintiff's agreement to release other claims beyond his CLRA claim for damages. Id. at 16. The Court explained:
Th[e] broad release language and covenant not to sue [included in the defendant's correction offer] would have prohibited Valdez from asserting his [Civil Code] section 1632, UCL, and fraud claims and his claim for injunctive relief under the CLRA. Yet Valdez had a right to bring those claims without first providing notice under the CLRA. As to a CLRA claim, a timely and appropriate correction under section 1782, subdivision (b), only bars a claim for damages, not injunctive relief. [Citations.]
Here, Valdez sought injunctive relief under the CLRA and UCL, prohibiting [defendant] “from entering into lease agreements without providing appropriate translations, prior to execution, when negotiations are conducted primarily in a language other than English ....” Injunctive relief is available under both the CLRA and the UCL. [Citations.] Because [defendant]’s draft settlement agreement did not provide the requested injunctive relief, it was not appropriate for [defendant] to condition its correction offer on release of Valdez’s claims for injunctive relief.
Id. at 17 (citations and footnotes omitted).
The opinion favorably cites and discusses Flores v. Southcoast Automotive Liquidators, Inc., 17 Cal.App.5th 841 (2017), which also held that a "reasonable" CLRA correction offer cannot bar the plaintiff "from pursuing remedies based on other statutory violations or common law causes of action based on conduct under those laws." Slip op. at 18-19 (quoting Flores, 17 Cal.App.5th at 850) (For more on Flores, see this blog post and accompanying comment.) The opinion also reconfirms Flores's holding that the UCL and CLRA provide independent remedies and are "independently actionable." Id. at 20-21.
Finally, the opinion declined to follow Benson v. Southern California Auto Sales, Inc., 239 Cal.App.4th 1198 (2015), in which a CLRA correction offer was held to bar non-CLRA claims that "were 'inextricably intertwined with the CLRA claim and based on the same conduct.'" Slip op. at 22 (quoting Benson, 239 Cal.App.4th at 1210). Such a holding, Valdez held, would be inconsistent with the plain text of sections 1782(a) and (b), as well as other CLRA provisions (namely sections 1752 and 1760), and "would lead to incongruous results." Id. at 23-24.
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