The "one final judgment" rule states that an appeal lies only after a final judgment that disposes of all issues between the parties. This rule frees the appellate courts from having to review, on a piecemeal basis, individual trial-court orders rendered during the course of litigation.

However, because review at the end of the day may come too late to undo the prejudicial effect of certain pretrial orders, appellate courts have held that such orders are not appealable after judgment and that review is permissible only by an immediate writ petition.

Examples include orders concerning judicial disqualification (Papadakis v. Zelis, 8 Cal.App.4th 1146 (1992)) and possession orders in eminent-domain cases (City of Morgan Hill v. Alberti, 211 Cal.App.3d 1435 (1989)).

Whether good-faith settlement determinations under Code of Civil Procedure Section 877.6 also fit into that category has been a matter of intense debate among the courts of appeal. Post-judgment review of such a determination can come too late to effectively provide relief. At the same time, there is no assurance that filing a writ petition will guarantee appellate review before judgment. The courts have sent seemingly contradictory signals on what the proper procedure is.

To place the issue in context, the good-faith settlement statute, Section 877.6(c), protects a defendant who settles a lawsuit in good faith from claims for equitable comparative contribution or implied equitable indemnity by nonsettling joint tortfeasors or co-obligors. Because of its broad claim-preclusion effect, there are clear benefits that follow from immediate review of a trial court's determination that a defendant has or has not settled in good faith.

After all, if the trial court erroneously determines that a defendant did not settle in good faith, that defendant, if unable to obtain immediate review, is forced to remain in the case, undergo discovery and, possibly, a trial. A reversal on appeal of the good-faith determination amounts to a Pyrrhic victory, because the settlement was supposed to purchase litigation peace, yet the settling defendant was dragged through the litigation wars.

Conversely, if a trial court erroneously determines that a defendant settled in good faith, postponing review until after judgment delays reinstatement of the erroneously dismissed defendant until after a trial has been conducted with a relevant party missing.

For these reasons, the Legislature recognized that it was preferable to afford immediate, interlocutory review of good-faith settlement determinations. Accordingly, it provided in Section 877.6(e) that "[w]hen a determination of the good faith or lack of good faith of a settlement is made, any party aggrieved by the determination may petition the proper court to review the determination by writ of mandate."

Not only does the statute provide a 30-day window for the reviewing court to determine whether it will hear the matter, but it also gives the matter "special precedence" over all other nonpreference civil appellate matters.

While the statute plainly allows a party to seek immediate writ review of a good-faith settlement determination, the more difficult question is whether a litigant must seek such review. Put differently, may the party wait until the trial court enters a final judgment and then challenge the trial court's good-faith settlement determination on an appeal from the final judgment?

In the most recent case addressing the issue, Division One of the 2nd District Court of Appeal held this past July that, notwithstanding the right to seek immediate writ review, a litigant may nevertheless challenge a trial court's good-faith settlement determination on appeal from a final judgment. Maryland Casualty Co. v. Andreini Co. of So. Cal., 81 Cal.App.4th 1413 (2000) (petition for rev. filed Aug. 14, 2000, S090711).

Maryland Casualty involved a coverage dispute between an insured, its insurer and its broker. The insured and the broker reached a settlement, and the trial court found that they had settled in good faith. This resulted in a dismissal of the insurer's cross-claims against the broker. The insurer challenged that determination in a petition for writ of mandate, but the Court of Appeal summarily denied the petition. After a final judgment, the insurer appealed and again challenged the trial court's good-faith settlement determination.

The Court of Appeal first noted that because Section 877.6(e) states that a party aggrieved by a good-faith settlement determination "may petition" for a writ of mandate, the statute suggests that writ review is not the exclusive means of reviewing a good-faith settlement determination. Conducting an exhaustive review of the legislative history, the court found explicit references to the Legislature's intent to preserve post-judgment appellate review.

Maryland Casualty also identified an earlier 2nd District decision, Greshko v. County of Los Angeles, 194 Cal.App.3d 822 (1987), which also concludes that good-faith determinations are reviewable on appeal from a final judgment.

Maryland Casualty is an abrupt departure from a series of cases that have held or suggested that an appellate court will not review good-faith determinations on an appeal after judgment.

In Main Fiber Products Inc. v. Morgan & Franz Ins. Agency, 73 Cal.App.4th 1130 (1999), Division Two of the 4th District ruled that a good-faith settlement determination "is a nonappealable interlocutory decree," that "[m]andamus is the exclusive procedure for obtaining immediate review of such an order" and that "an aggrieved party may not forego writ review and seek instead to have the determination reviewed for the first time in an appeal from the final judgment arising out of the trial."

Main Fiber also supported its holding with excerpts from the legislative history of Section 877.6, in which it saw evidence that the Legislature thought immediate writ review "imperative" and not simply "preferable." Main Fiber also relied on an earlier 1st District decision (Diamond Heights Homeowner Ass'n v. National Amer. Ins. Co., 227 Cal.App.3d 564 (1991)) that had held that a party's failure to seek writ review barred a challenge to a good faith settlement on appeal and dicta in two other cases to the same effect.

At first blush, Main Fiber and Maryland Casualty seem to be in irreconcilable conflict: One says writ review is exclusive, the other says it is not. However, perhaps to avoid directly taking on Main Fiber, Maryland Casualty suggested one way to harmonize the decisions. The rule is this: A party may challenge a good-faith determination in a post-judgment appeal only if it sought a writ of mandate immediately after the determination and received a summary denial from the Court of Appeal.

Strictly speaking, that rule is faithful to both Main Fiber (because the defendant there never sought pretrial writ review) and Maryland Casualty (because the defendant there did). There also is precedent for such a rule in other contexts. People v. Brown, 6 Cal.4th 322 (1993) (timely pursuit of writ review is a condition precedent to obtaining review on appeal of due-process claim of judicial bias).

Moreover, there is some logic to that rule. The Legislature stated a clear preference for having parties promptly seek writ review of good-faith determinations. But a party who does so receives no guarantee that its claim will be heard on the merits. Thus, the reasoning goes, the rule is that to encourage parties to seek writ review and preserve their right to a ruling on the merits, the Legislature required them to seek writ review as a condition of later obtaining review on a post-judgment appeal.

Although this view does reconcile Maryland Casualty and Main Fiber, it pays little attention to the statute. Whereas the legislative history of Section 877.6 contains references to the Legislature's intent to preserve post-judgment appellate review, nothing in the statute or its legislative history indicates that the Legislature sought to condition such review on the earlier filing of a writ petition. Cf. Brown (writ deemed precondition to appellate review where judicial-disqualification statute stated that an order on a recusal motion is not appealable and is reviewable only by petition for writ of mandate).

Thus, while one may reconcile Maryland Casualty and Main Fiber by requiring litigants to seek writ review as a prerequisite to post-judgment review on appeal of a good-faith settlement determination, it is questionable whether that requirement survives scrutiny.

Perhaps the California Supreme Court will grant review in Maryland Casualty and resolve this uncertain point of law by deciding what the Legislature intended in enacting the writ-review statute in Section 877.6(e).

In the meantime (and perhaps in any event), litigants may be sure of one thing: If they unsuccessfully seek writ review of a good-faith settlement determination, they will have the best possible argument if they then appeal after judgment, challenge that determination again, and must confront the contention that their claim is not reviewable on appeal.

Of course, by first seeking writ review and later appealing, a litigant also exhausts all procedures available to challenge a good-faith settlement determination and thereby maximizes its chances of successfully overturning that determination. Therefore, a litigant who is dissatisfied with a trial court's good-faith settlement determination would be well-advised to seek a writ now or forever hold its peace.