California, United States of America
The following excerpt is from Mandosa v. Regents of the Univ. of Cal., B237290 (Cal. App. 2013):
"A prevailing party who has made a valid pretrial offer pursuant to Code of Civil Procedure section 998 is eligible for specified costs, so long as the offer was reasonable and made in good faith. [Citation.]" (Nelson v. Anderson (1999) 72 Cal.App.4th 111, 134.) "Good faith requires that the pretrial offer of settlement be 'realistically reasonable under the circumstances of the particular case. Normally, therefore, a token or nominal offer will not satisfy this good faith requirement, . . .' [Citation.] The offer 'must carry with it some reasonable prospect of acceptance. [Citation.]' [Citation.] One having no expectation that his or her offer will be accepted will not be allowed to benefit from a no-risk offer made for the sole purpose of later recovering large expert witness fees." (Jones
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