In Meehan v. Aguirre (2026, 2d Appellate Dist., B343396), a traumatic brain injury plaintiff who won at trial walked away without nearly $1 million in costs she expected to collect, because her own 998 offer sequencing worked against her. The case is a clear warning about a trap embedded in California's cost-shifting statute that plaintiff practitioners routinely miss.
The Facts
The plaintiff, a bicyclist, was struck by a semi-trailer operated by a truck driver whose employer owned the vehicle. She sued for personal injuries including a TBI. During litigation she made four settlement offers under Code of Civil Procedure section 998: three successive offers at $1,000,000 and a final offer at $2,000,000. All expired without acceptance. The case proceeded to a six-week bench trial in Los Angeles County Superior Court. The court found both parties negligent and apportioned fault 85 percent to the defendants and 15 percent to the plaintiff. After the comparative reduction, the plaintiff recovered $1,062,500.
Post-trial, the plaintiff moved for nearly $1 million in section 998 costs, including prejudgment interest under Civil Code section 3291 and expert witness fees. The theory was straightforward on its face: the defendants had refused multiple 998 offers, ultimately received a judgment that exceeded the first three offers, and should be penalized accordingly.
The Last-Offer Rule
The trial court rejected the cost motion, and the appellate court affirmed. The holding restates a principle that is settled in California law but is still widely misjudged in practice: when a plaintiff has made multiple successive section 998 offers, only the final unaccepted offer counts for determining whether the judgment exceeds the offer and triggers cost-shifting and prejudgment interest.
In Meehan, the plaintiff's final offer was $2,000,000. Her judgment of $1,062,500 did not exceed that amount. The fact that it exceeded the three earlier $1,000,000 offers was irrelevant. The earlier offers were superseded by the subsequent offer, and by making the final escalated offer, the plaintiff effectively withdrew the prior offers for 998 cost-shifting purposes.
Why Plaintiff Counsel Gets This Wrong
The intuitive logic of 998 practice leads many practitioners to treat escalating offers as giving the plaintiff multiple chances to succeed. In practice, the last-offer rule means that each new 998 offer raises the bar the plaintiff's own recovery must clear to trigger cost-shifting. The plaintiff in Meehan was in a worse cost-shifting position at the end of litigation than she would have been had she stopped after her first $1,000,000 offer.
Common scenarios where this trap appears:
- Escalating offers as case value develops: Plaintiff makes a $500,000 offer early, defense does not respond, plaintiff later makes a $1,000,000 offer after expert reports come in. If the verdict is $750,000, the plaintiff beats the first offer but not the second. Only the second offer matters. The plaintiff collects nothing under 998.
- Settlement conference pressure: Plaintiff makes an elevated offer at the urging of a mediator to demonstrate good faith. The offer supersedes the prior 998, raising the cost-shifting threshold, often without any corresponding increase in the expected verdict range.
- Bifurcated expert costs: A plaintiff who has already incurred significant expert costs and now faces trial might improve cost recovery prospects by not making a new 998 if the prior one was better than the expected judgment range.
What Meehan Means for 998 Strategy
The most direct lesson is this: before making any new 998 offer, plaintiff counsel must calculate whether the expected range of trial outcomes exceeds the proposed new offer. If there is a meaningful probability that the verdict falls between the old offer and the new one, the new offer could destroy existing cost-shifting rights without adding protective value.
A second implication concerns prejudgment interest under Civil Code section 3291. Prejudgment interest in California personal injury cases accrues from the date of the section 998 offer that the plaintiff ultimately beats. In the escalating-offer scenario, if only the final offer matters, and the judgment does not exceed the final offer, no prejudgment interest accrues at all. In a catastrophic injury case with years of litigation, this can represent hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost interest.
Third, Meehan underscores the need to track each defendant separately. In cases with multiple defendants, a 998 offer to one defendant that is superseded by a later joint offer may leave cost-shifting rights against the original defendant in doubt. Whether prior individual offers survive a subsequent joint offer is a question of how the offers were framed and accepted or rejected; the safest practice is to make independent section 998 offers to each defendant and avoid subsequent offers that might be construed as superseding them.
Practical Checklist Before Filing a New 998
- What is the existing 998, if any, and when does it expire?
- Does the proposed new offer exceed the current offer? If yes, run the verdict-range analysis.
- What is the realistic low end of the damages verdict? If the new offer exceeds that figure, cost-shifting rights against that defendant are at risk.
- Are there outstanding expert costs whose recovery depends on cost-shifting? Quantify them before upgrading the offer.
- Is this offer being made independently to each defendant, or jointly? Joint offers require specific language to preserve apportionment of cost recovery.
For broader CCP 998 practice resources, see case law and settlements coverage. The prejudgment interest mechanics that interact with 998 strategy are part of the auto-accident damages practice section for vehicle collision cases.