Legal Question in Landlord & Tenant Law in California

The tentative ruling system was adopted by the courts to save court time, lawyer time, and costs to clients in the handling of motions, which is the term for any request that the court issue orders on various issues that come up during the time from when a case is filed and before the actual trial. The process by which one side files a request for an order, the other side responds, and the court rules on the motion is called "law and motion."

Law and motion consumes a very large portion of the court's time and resources. Since most cases settle before trial, law and motion matters consume virtually all the court time spent on most civil cases, both for lawyers and the courts. In addition, the lawyers spend a lot of time (at client expense) preparing the written papers that must be submitted to the court in support of or opposition to each motion. Then the court must read the papers, read any legal authorities referenced in the papers, often do some additional legal research on the issues presented by the motion, etc.

When a motion is filed, a hearing date is set for the attorneys to go to court and present oral arguments in support or favor of the motion, on top of the written submissions. By the time all that legal research and written work has been done and read by the court, it is usually very clear what the facts are that are relevant to the motion, what the relevant legal authorities are, and what the arguments are in favor and opposition to granting the motion. The moving party has laid out their side, the other party has laid out an opposition, and the moving party has rebutted the opposition. Since the rebuttal is not supposed to raise new facts or arguments, only reply to the opposition, there should be no real need for the opposition to add anything in most cases.

So by the time the hearing rolls around, there really is very little to be added. The court knows what it needs to know to rule, and naturally has already formed an opinion of which way to go. The hearing was usually just a recitation of the arguments made in the written papers. A lawyer who was not able to persuade a judge with his or her written arguments was not very likely to be such a masterful orator to change the judge's mind. Only occasionally would a judge feel the need to ask questions or obtain clarification on anything from the written submissions before forming a decision.

As a result, nine times out of ten, the attorneys spent most of a morning or afternoon sitting in court waiting to make oral arguments that would not change the outcome. The judges had to spend half or all day on the bench hearing arguments that weren't going to change their mind, and clients got fat bills for time that was usually wasted.

The solution the courts came up with is to issue "tentative rulings" before the hearing. In the tentative ruling the court advises the attorneys how the court will rule based on the written submissions alone. If the judge feels the need to ask questions or obtain more information before ruling, there will be no tentative ruling or the ruling will be "parties ordered to appear." Otherwise, the losing attorneys have to decide whether they can really justify the time and client expense of them going to the hearing and, against virtually all odds, to try to talk the judge into reversing the tentative ruling.

Occasionally, the motion will be so very important that all possible effort must be made to win or defeat it. Also occasionally it appears from the tentative ruling that the judge may not have understood something in the papers. In those cases, an attorney should notify the court and the other side that they reject the tentative ruling and request the hearing go forward. Otherwise, the parties just accept the tentative ruling and if no one notifies the court that they want a hearing, the tentative ruling becomes the final ruling of the court, saving the attorneys time, a lot of court time, and a lot of money for the clients.