Stiehl

*722 Opinion

After the magistrate held defendant John Melvin Stiehl to answer on a charge of receiving stolen property, the Placer County District Attorney’s Office took an information to the court to be filed. The court clerk stamped the information “received,” but not “filed,” and placed it in the file for one of defendant’s other cases. This mistake was discovered after the statutorily mandated time for filing an information had passed, and the trial court granted defendant’s subsequent motion to dismiss on the ground the information was not timely filed.

On appeal, the People contend the trial court erred in granting the motion to dismiss because the prosecutor’s office timely filed the information by delivering it to the court clerk. The People also argue that even if the information was not timely filed, good cause existed for the trial court to decline to dismiss the information. We do not reach the People’s second argument, because, agreeing with their first, we reverse the decision of the trial court. As we will explain, the information was “filed” when it was delivered to the court clerk for filing, even though the clerk failed to process the document…