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California Supreme Court:
Malicious Prosecution Suit Against Lawyer Is Time-Barred
Opinion Says Two-Year Statute Applies, Rejecting View of Some Courts of Appeal That Shorter Period for Suing, Generally Covering Actions Against Attorneys Relating to Their Professional Services, Pertains
By a MetNews Staff Writer
Malicious prosecution claims brought against attorneys—relating to their representation of clients who pursued previous legal action against the plaintiff—are governed by the same two-year statute of limitation applicable to all other defendants for such causes of action, the California Supreme Court held yesterday.
In a unanimous decision authored by Justice Carol Corrigan, the court rejected the view, taken by a majority of courts of appeal to address the issue, that such claims are governed by the statute of limitations found in Code of Civil Procedure §340.6, which provides:
“An action against an attorney for a wrongful act or omission, other than for actual fraud, arising in the performance of professional services shall be commenced within one year after the plaintiff discovers, or through the use of reasonable diligence should have discovered, the facts constituting the wrongful act or omission, or four years from the date of the wrongful act or omission, whichever occurs first.”
Corrigan’s Opinion
Corrigan wrote:
“Based on the statutory text, purpose, and legislative history, we hold that section 340.6 does not apply to claims against attorneys brought by parties who were never their clients or the intended beneficiaries of their clients. Because the malicious prosecution claims here are brought by formerly adverse parties and not by an attorney’s own clients, they are not subject to the one-year limitations period in section 340.6.”
The high court held that Code of Civil Procedure §335.1, which sets forth a two-year limitations period for a variety of tort actions, applies to malicious prosecution claims regardless of whether they are filed against lawyers or their clients.
The decision comes in a case brought by Daniel Escamilla, a certified fugitive recovery agent who sued Lan Wu, Andy Yang, and their San Francisco-based attorney John Vannucci for malicious prosecution in August 2021. Escamilla’s complaint followed an entry of judgment in his favor, in September 2019, in a lawsuit filed by Wu and Yang relating to the agent’s search of their home.
Vannucci, who represented Wu and Yang in the earlier lawsuit, moved to strike Escamilla’s complaint against him as a SLAPP under Code of Civil Procedure §425.16. He argued that the malicious prosecution claim arose from protected activity, an assertion Escamilla does not dispute, and that the plaintiff could not establish a probability of prevailing, as required by the anti-SLAPP statute.
Specifically, Vannucci argued that Escamilla’s complaint was barred by the one-year statute of limitations found in §340.6.
Trial Court’s Ruling
Then-Alameda Superior Court Judge Tara Desautels (now a justice with the First District Court of Appeal) found that §340.6 governed and declared that Escamilla’s claim against the attorney is time-barred. She granted the motion to strike as to Vannucci only. Div. One of the First District Court of Appeal affirmed.
Framing the issue, Corrigan said:
“No one questions that former clients can sue their attorneys for malpractice and that section 340.6 applies to such a lawsuit. There is also no dispute that attorneys may be sued for malicious prosecution. The question here is which statute of limitations applies when an attorney is sued for malicious prosecution based on the attorney’s representation of a client in the underlying litigation?”
She remarked:
“The requirement that the alleged misconduct arise ‘in the performance of professional services’…suggests the statute is limited to claims challenging the attorney’s performance of those services for a client. But a broad reading of the phrase might suggest the statute could encompass claims against attorneys brought by anyone, so long as the alleged misconduct is connected to the attorney’s professional activities.” Concluding that “the text of section 340.6 is ambiguous,” she turned to the Legislative history for guidance and noted that the law was enacted in 1977 to address rapidly rising legal malpractice insurance premiums and a statutory scheme that made different limitations periods apply depending on whether the lawyer was being sued for breach of contract, fraud, or some cause of action.
Against that background, she commented that “[w]hen the Legislature enacted section 340.6…, malicious prosecution claims were already subject to a one-year statute of limitations.” Under those circumstances, she opined:
“Thus, even assuming malicious prosecution claims might contribute to increased premiums for legal malpractice insurance, the 1977 Legislature would have understood that bringing such claims within section 340.6 would have had no effect on these costs….
“Accordingly, legislative history and the purposes animating section 340.6 lead us to conclude that the statute does not apply to malicious prosecution claims brought against attorneys by third parties.”
Saying that the court’s construction of the statute avoids potentially unfair results, she added:
“In this case,…there is no question that Escamilla’s malicious prosecution claim against non-attorneys Yang and Wu is timely under the two-year limitations period of section 335.1. Yet, in the Court of Appeal’s interpretation, the same claim against attorney Vannucci was subject to dismissal under the one-year limitations period of section 340.6. Such differential treatment puts the greater burden on clients, even though attorneys are generally better positioned to assess whether an action is supported by probable cause.”
She pointed to the 2015 California Supreme Court decision in Lee v. Hanley, in which the court held that §340.6 only applies to claims premised on an attorney’s violation of a “professional obligation” during the attorney-client relationship, not the full range of misconduct that any person, lawyer or otherwise, might commit.
Concluding that “Lee did not address whether section 340.6 applied to claims brought by nonclients,” she remarked that “[n]otably, all of Lee’s examples of potentially covered claims involve obligations attorneys owe to their present or former clients” and the case “did not suggest that section 340.6 might extend to claims brought by nonclients for wrongs allegedly done to them.”
Putting yesterday’s interpretation together with the one at issue in Lee, she concluded:
“As we interpret the statute, the one-year limitations period of section 340.6 applies only to claims by an attorney’s clients, or their intended beneficiaries, and only when the merits of the claim necessarily depend on proof the attorney violated a professional obligation.”
The jurist declared that “[t]he matter is remanded to the Court of Appeal for it to return the case to the trial court with directions to consider any unaddressed arguments in the anti-SLAPP motion.”
She said that the contrary holdings in Garcia v. Rosenberg, Connelly v. Bornstein, Yee v. Cheung, and Vafi v. McCloskey, are disapproved. Corrigan pointed to this district’s 2014 opinion, written by then-Justice Richard Aldrich (now a private mediator), in Roger Cleveland Golf Co. Inc. v. Krane & Smith APC as the “one published decision” in line with yesterday’s high court ruling.
The case is Escamilla v. Vannucci, 2025 S.O.S. 735.
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