§ 430.41.Meeting Required Before Filing Demurrer

Section 430.41 adds a mandatory conversation before a demurrer to a complaint, cross-complaint, or answer. The demurring party must meet and confer — in person, by telephone, or by video conference — with the party who filed the pleading, to see whether the objections can be resolved without motion practice. If the other side later files an amended pleading, the parties must meet and confer again before a demurrer to that amended version.

The conversation itself has content requirements, not just a box to check. The demurring party must identify every cause of action it believes is subject to demurrer and the legal support for each deficiency; the responding party must explain why the pleading is legally sufficient or how it could be amended to fix the problem. The parties must meet and confer at least 5 days before the responsive pleading is due. If they cannot manage that in time, the demurring party gets an automatic 30-day extension — triggered by filing, on or before the date the demurrer would otherwise be due, a declaration made under penalty of perjury describing the good-faith attempt and explaining why the meet-and-confer did not happen. The extension runs from the pleading's original due date, and the demurring party cannot be defaulted during that extension. Any further extension requires a court order for good cause.

Whatever happens in the conversation, the demurring party must file a declaration with the demurrer itself, stating either that the parties met and conferred but could not agree, or that the other side failed to respond to the request or to participate in good faith. Meeting and conferring does not decide the demurrer's merits, though: § 430.41(a)(4) provides that a court's finding the meet-and-confer process was insufficient is not, by itself, a ground to overrule or sustain the demurrer — it is a procedural prerequisite, not a substitute for testing the pleading.

Section 430.41 also limits repeat demurrers and repeat amendments. A party demurring to an amended pleading cannot raise grounds that could have been raised against the earlier version. After a court sustains a demurrer with leave to amend, it may order a further conference of the parties before the amended pleading or a demurrer to it is filed. And in response to a demurrer, before the case is at issue, a complaint or cross-complaint generally cannot be amended more than three times, absent an offer showing a reasonable possibility the defect can be cured — though amendments made without leave under § 472, filed before the first demurrer, do not count against that limit. The section does not apply to actions by an unrepresented, incarcerated party, or to unlawful detainer and forcible entry or detainer proceedings, and it does not affect appellate review or the waiver rules in § 430.80.