Opinion
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED
APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of Fresno County No. 06CECG00838, Mark W. Snauffer, Judge.
McCormick, Barstow, Sheppard, Wayte & Carruth, and Daniel L. Wainwright, for Defendants and Respondents.
Vincente Edralin and Marietta Edralin, in Propria Persona, for Plaintiffs and Appellants.
OPINION
Before Ardaiz, P.J., Hill, J. and Kane, J.
Appellants Vicente Edralin and Marietta Edralin brought this civil action against respondents John McNaughton, M.D., and Community Emergency Medical Associates (“CEMA”). Appellants represent themselves on this appeal, and have presented an appellate record which includes neither their complaint nor a reporter’s transcript of the trial, but the action appears to have been a medical malpractice action, possibly accompanied by a loss of consortium claim by appellant Marietta Edralin. The judgment entered in favor of Dr. McNaughton states that the trial included two weeks of testimony, that appellants voluntarily dismissed CEMA as a defendant during the trial, and that the jury returned a special verdict finding Dr. McNaughton did not breach the standard of care for an emergency room physician in the diagnosis, treatment and care of appellant Vicente Edralin at Fresno Community Hospital.
APPELLANTS’ CONTENTIONS
Rather than attempt to paraphrase appellants’ contentions, we will present them verbatim. Under the heading “RELIEF REQUESTED,” appellants state:
“The Judgment on Special Verdict was due to Appellants’ counsel’s failure to obtain at the consent of the Appellant before releasing Defendant. Community Emergency Association, and the Judgment from the trial was the result of Appellants not being allowed to present their case in its entirety at the trial. The conclusion of the jury was reached without ever hearing the full extent of the Appellants’ evidence. Appellants do not feel that the Defendants’ met their burden of proof. Based upon factual background in this matter, they conclude the court abused it’s discretion and that the Judgment on Special Verdict and the Judgment in Favor of Defendant John McNaughton, M.D., must be reversed.”
Under the heading “CONCLUSION,” appellants assert:
“The Appellants have shown sufficient evidence that their case has triable issues and that the Judgment on Special Verdict and Judgment in Favor of Defendant John McNaughton, M.D. and Judgment in Favor of Defendant was issued without good cause. Therefore it was improper for the Labor Commissioner to find against Appellant. For these reasons the Appellant concludes the court abused it’s discretion and the judgment must be reversed.”
APPELLANTS HAVE SHOWN NO ERROR
This appeal requires us to revisit and restate some basic, fundamental principles of appellate review of a trial court judgment.
First: “‘A judgment or order of the lower court is presumed correct. All intendments and presumptions are indulged in to support it on matters as to which the record is silent, and error must be affirmatively shown. This is not only a general principle of appellate practice but an ingredient of the constitutional doctrine of reversible error.’” (Denham v. Superior Court (1970) 2 Cal.3d 557, 564; in accord, see also Ketchum v. Moses (2001) 24 Cal.4th 1122, 1140.) “‘It is well settled that all presumptions and intendments are in favor of supporting the judgment or order appealed from, and that an appellant has the burden of showing reversible error, and that, in the absence of such showing, the judgment or order appealed from will be affirmed.’ [Citation.]” (Walling v. Kimball (1941) 17 Cal.2d 364, 373; Hibernia Sav. & Loan Soc. v. Ellis Estate Co. (1933) 132 Cal.App.408, 412.) “All presumptions indulged in are in favor of the regularity of the judgment and proceedings upon which it is based, hence it devolves upon an appellant to affirmatively show the existence of the error upon which he asks for a reversal.” (Scott v. Hollywood Park Co. (1917) 176 Cal. 680, 681; Dahlberg v. Dahlberg (1927) 202 Cal. 295, 297.) “The burden rests upon the party complaining not only to show error but also to show that the error is sufficiently prejudicial to justify a reversal.” (Coleman v. Farwell (1929) 206 Cal. 740, 741.) “‘“[E]rror must be affirmatively shown.”’” (Howard v. Thrifty Drug & Discount Stores (1995) 10 Cal.4th 424, 443.)
Second: “When an appellant decides to represent himself in propria persona, ‘he is entitled to the same, but no greater, consideration than other litigants and attorneys. [Citations.]’” (Bistawros v. Greenberg (1987) 189 Cal.App.3d 189, 193; in accord, Nelson v. Gaunt (1981) 125 Cal.App.3d 623, 638, disagreed with on another ground in Dumas v. Stocker (1989) 213 Cal.App.3d 1262, 1269, fn. 13), and Bianco v. California Highway Patrol (1993) 24 Cal.App.4th 1113, 1125.) This holds true both in the appellate courts (see Bistawros, supra,), and in the trial courts. “A doctrine generally requiring or permitting exceptional treatment of parties who represent themselves would lead to a quagmire in the trial courts, and would be unfair to the other parties to litigation.” (Rappleyea v. Campbell (1994) 8 Cal.4th 975, 985,)
Third: “When a trial court’s factual determination is attacked on the ground that there is no substantial evidence to sustain it, the power of an appellate court begins and ends with the determination as to whether, on the entire record, there is substantial evidence, contradicted or uncontradicted, which will support the determination, and when two or more inferences can reasonably be deduced from the facts, a reviewing court is without power to substitute its deductions for those of the trial court. If such substantial evidence be found, it is of no consequence that the trial court believing other evidence, or drawing other reasonable inferences, might have reached a contrary conclusion. [Citations.]” (Bowers v. Bernards (1984) 150 Cal.App.3d 870, 873-874.) Substantial evidence is evidence “‘of ponderable legal significance, … reasonable in nature, credible, and of solid value.’ [Citations.]” (Id. at p. 873.) “When two or more inferences can be reasonably deduced from the facts, the reviewing court is without power to substitute its deductions for those of the trial court.” (Crawford v. Southern Pac. Co. (1935) 3 Cal.2d 427, 429; in accord, see also Western States Petroleum Assn. v. Superior Court (1995) 9 Cal.4th 559, 571.) An appellant’s burden to affirmatively demonstrate error, when coupled with the substantial evidence rule, leads to the “elementary and fundamental” conclusion that when an appellant “has elected to appeal on the clerk’s transcript alone, so that none of the evidence produced in the trial court is before us… the appellate court must conclusively presume that the evidence is ample to sustain the findings .…” (Kompf v. Morrison (1946) 73 Cal.App.2d 284, 286.)
As for appellants’ contentions of their trial counsel’s purported “failure to obtain at the consent of the Appellant before releasing Defendant. Community Emergency Association” and of their “not being allowed to present their case in its entirety at the trial,” there is nothing in the record on appeal to support those assertions. Appellants call our attention to page 94 of the clerk’s transcript on appeal, but all that appears there is an award of costs to the prevailing defendant, McNaughton. Appellants make no showing that the court failed to receive any evidence they offered, or that they were prejudiced by any ruling excluding evidence, if there was any such ruling. (See Evid. Code, § 354.) Appellants cite Carroll v. Abbott Laboratories, Inc. (1982) 32 Cal.3d 892, a case in which the California Supreme Court reversed a trial court’s order granting a plaintiff relief under Code of Civil Procedure section 473 from an earlier order of dismissal of the case due to the plaintiff’s failure to comply with an order to produce documents in discovery. The case before us was never dismissed. It was tried and a verdict was reached. If appellants are referring to the dismissal of CEMA, nothing in this record shows that appellants ever sought any relief from that dismissal.
As for appellants’ assertion that they “do not feel that the Defendants’ met their burden of proof,” Dr. McNaughton had no burden to demonstrate that he did not breach the applicable standard of care. Appellants had the burden of demonstrating that he did breach it. “The burden is on the plaintiff to prove every essential fact on which she relies [citation].” (Oldenburg v. Sears, Roebuck & Co. (1957) 152 Cal.App.2d 733, 741.) “Where, under the substantive law, a fact is essential to the plaintiff’s claim for relief, the burden of pleading and proof of that fact is on the plaintiff.” (1 Witkin, Cal. Evidence (4th ed. 2000), Burden of Proof and Presumptions, § 7, p. 159; see also Evid. Code, § 500, and Judicial Council of California, Civil Jury Instructions (CACI) No. 200). The jury heard and saw the evidence presented to it and expressly found in its special verdict that Dr. McNaughton did not breach the applicable standard of care.
As for appellants’ assertion that “their case has triable issues,” the case has already been tried. Appellants lost.
As for their assertion that “it was improper for the Labor Commissioner to find against Appellant,” we see nothing in the record indicating that this case had anything to do with a Labor Commissioner. The jury’s special verdict shows that a jury found no breach by Dr. McNaughton of the applicable standard of care.
DISPOSITION
The judgment is affirmed. Costs on appeal are awarded to respondents.