Britton v. Girardi
Annotate this CasePlaintiffs were represented by defendant attorneys in an action against State Farm arising out of the 1994 Northridge earthquake. Court-appointed retired judges presided over a 1997 aggregate settlement. In 2012, one of the plaintiffs conducted a random sampling of other plaintiffs’ awards in the action, which, they claimed, revealed that the defendants had not properly disbursed or accounted for the settlement funds and had concealed this conduct from plaintiffs. Plaintiffs sought damages for failure to obtain their informed consent to an aggregate settlement and misappropriation of and failure to account for the settlement funds. The trial court dismissed, finding the claims based on speculation and barred by the statute of limitations. The court of appeal affirmed, rejecting arguments that the statute of limitations had not run under Probate Code section 16460 because they had no notice of wrongdoing and that actions for violations of Business and Professions Code section 6091 in failing to provide an accounting are not barred because their action was filed within one year of failure to comply with the statute. Where there are facts sufficient to put one on inquiry notice, the fraud statute of limitations starts running even when the defendant is a fiduciary.
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