Practitioner Blog
Anabi Oil Corporation v. Fuel Enterprise, Inc.
California Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District, Division Two · August 2026 · Civil Procedure Unpublished
Docket No. B337933 (consolidated with B340224) — citation not yet assigned (2026)
Unpublished opinion. A small number of the opinions below are unpublished and cannot be cited or relied on in any other California proceeding under Rule of Court 8.1115. They are included, and marked as such, because the procedural reasoning is still useful to understand even where it carries no citable weight.
Procedural Issue
Preservation — objections to a statement of decision
Holding
Where a trial court's proposed statement of decision finds that a party actually relied on a misrepresentation but never clearly resolves whether that reliance was reasonable — a distinct element of fraud — an objection that attacks the court's reasonableness determination as unsupported by the evidence, without using the word "omission" or "ambiguity," can still be specific enough to preserve the defect under Code of Civil Procedure section 634, because the objection identifies a finding the proposed decision does not actually contain.
Why It Matters
Section 634 objections are unforgiving in practice, and this opinion is a rare instance of an objection surviving a sufficiency challenge on close facts — with a full dissent arguing the opposite result. Do not assume that phrasing an objection as a factual disagreement automatically waives it if the proposed statement of decision never actually made the finding you're disputing; conversely, do not rely on this outcome without a clean record, since the dissent shows a differently constituted panel could easily go the other way. The safer practice remains unchanged: when an ultimate fact is missing or unclear, say so explicitly using the omission/ambiguity language section 634 contemplates, rather than trusting a court to read that meaning into a differently worded objection.
Read the Opinion
About This Entry
Court: California Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District, Division Two
Topic: Civil Procedure
Month: August 2026
Publication status: Unpublished
Last verified: 2026-08-31
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