NUTRAGENETICS, LLC v. Superior Court

SUMMARY

This writ proceeding challenges the trial court’s acceptance of a motion to disqualify the trial judge under Code of Civil Procedure section 170.6, which permits a peremptory challenge to the judge. Plaintiff filed two successive lawsuits, some two and one-half months apart, against different defendants, alleging some identical and some different causes of action, but both arising from substantially the same underlying events. The two lawsuits were deemed related. When the second lawsuit was assigned to the same judge as the first, plaintiff moved to disqualify the judge, who by then had made a ruling unfavorable to plaintiff (granting a petition to compel arbitration) in the first lawsuit. The question is whether the second lawsuit against a different defendant constituted a continuation of the first lawsuit rather than a separate and independent action, thus rendering plaintiff’s peremptory challenge untimely.

Because the second lawsuit (1) involves a different defendant and different causes of action asserted against that defendant, and (2) does not arise from conduct in, or involve enforcement or modification of an order in, the first lawsuit, we conclude…