Demps

Paraphrasing Alexander Pope, a court “should never be ashamed to own [it] has been in the wrong; which is but saying, in other words, that [it] is wiser today than [it] was yesterday.” (Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects in Miscellanies in Prose and Verse (1727) vol. I, p. 340.)

We write today to “own” that the procedure we approved in Biljac Associates v. First Interstate Bank (1990) 218 Cal.App.3d 1410 [ 267 Cal.Rptr. 819 ] (Biljac) was wrong. There, in affirming a summary judgment, we held that a trial judge need not rule on each evidentiary objection, but could preserve the record by simply stating that “ T am going to disregard all those portions of the evidence that I consider to be incompetent and inadmissible.’ ” {Id. at p. 1419, fn. 3.) Today, seemingly wiser, we reject that holding, and hold instead, as dictated by two California Supreme Court cases and consistent with all published, post-Biljac Court of Appeal opinions, that a trial judge’s failure to rule on properly presented objections results in their being waived, the effect of which is that the objected-to evidence is in the record for purposes of appellate review.

The trial judge here expressly stated…