Horner v. Judges’ Retirement System CA3
Plaintiff Julie Stothers Horner’s mother received retirement benefits from 1985 when her husband, an active trial judge, died until 2000 when she too passed away. Thirteen years later plaintiff filed a complaint against defendant Judges’ Retirement System (JRS) for underpayment of the benefits paid to her mother. Plaintiff lost both the judicial and administrative proceedings. In the underlying lawsuit, she again seeks payment for the increased benefits she still insists her mother should have received, albeit on a different legal theory. The trial court held her claim was barred by the statute of limitations and res judicata. The court also imposed sanctions on plaintiff’s lawyer because he knew or should have known that the complaint and his pleadings defending the complaint were not “warranted by existing law or by a nonfrivolous argument for the extension, modification, or reversal of existing law or the establishment of new law.” (Code Civ. Proc., § 128.7, subd. (
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