Breaking Barriers to Justice
Breaking the Sixty-Year Barrier: SB 29 and the Fight to Preserve Survival Damages By Alina S. Vulic, Jacqueline Serna
California has spent four years experimenting with a simple proposition. When a person dies before their day in court, the wrongdoer should not get a discount on the human cost of what they did. Senate Bill 447, authored by Senator John Laird in 2021 and co- sponsored by the Consumer Attorneys of California, made that proposition operative. For survival actions filed between January 1, 2022 and January 1, 2026, plaintiffs could recover the decedent’s pain, suffering, and disfigurement, the same damages the decedent could have recovered while alive. On January 1, 2026, that window closed. California reverted to a rule that 45 other states and the District of Columbia rejected long ago. Senate Bill 29, also authored by Senator Laird and co-sponsored by CAOC, asks the Legislature not to leave this injustice in place. The bill would extend for an additional five years the temporary "survival statute" provisions that allow a decedent's personal representative or successor in interest to recover damages that would otherwise be unavailable after the victim's death.
As with the legislation that originally enacted these provisions, SB 29 faces strong opposition from the medical industry and its insurers. They are again seeking a special exemption for medical malpractice actions—even though medical malpractice defendants already benefit from the statutory cap on noneconomic damages under the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act (MICRA), Cal. Civ. Code § 3333.2. The barrier SB 29 is designed to break is older than most of the cases it touches. Under the version of Code of Civil Procedure section 377.34 that California has now returned to, a survival action allows the decedent’s estate to recover only economic damages: medical bills, lost wages, and the like. The decedent’s pre-death pain and suffering, no matter how prolonged or how severe, is extinguished at the moment of death. A defendant who delays a case long enough to outlast a dying plaintiff gets to keep that money. The plaintiff’s family does not.
Jacqueline Serna is CAOC’s Policy Director. She joined CAOC in 2011 after working in the Assembly for then- Assemblymember Ricardo Lara. Jacquie has successfully helped passed legislation to permit post-death pain and suffering damages, ban secret settlements in sexual harassment and sexual assault cases, better the rights of elder abuse victims, ensure fair and just compensation for injured undocumented immigrants, and protect the rights of workers.
Alina S. Vulic is an Associate at Kabateck LLP where her practice focuses on complex civil litigation, including personal injury, employment law, wrongful death and medical malpractice. Alina has played key roles in nationally recognized and high- profile litigation, including the wrongful death case arising from the “Rust” film set shooting and the Robson v. MJJ Productions / MJJ Ventures, where she represented sex abuse survivors in complex negligence and corporate liability claims.
jserna@caoc.org
av@kbklawyers.com
14
Consumer Attorneys of California
FORUM July/August 2026
Made with FlippingBook - Online catalogs