Less than a month after the California Supreme Court’s watershed case in Family Violence Appellate Project v. Superior Court expanded the common-law right of indigent litigants, the Third District used that case to let a man worth $1.75 million out of a $31 million appeal bond.
The ladder of new common-law “indigent” accommodations is going up faster than expected, with Guzman v. Superior Court (D3 Sep. 4, 2026 No. C105049) [cert. for pub.] as the first rung.
Staying a money judgment using an admitted surety requires a bond of one and a half times the judgment. Section 995.240 lets a court waive it where the principal "is indigent and is unable to obtain sufficient sureties," and most of us read "indigent" the way it reads on a fee waiver.
Wrong, says the Third District. "[I]ndigent means any person who is unable to obtain sufficient sureties, not just a person who is destitute." There is no "absolute standard of indigency," only "a relative benchmark based on the costs inhibiting access to courts." A jury found Nathan Wigle negligent and awarded Raul Guzman $18.5 million, which with costs and interest put the required bond over $31 million. Wigle was worth about $1.75 million. The trial court cut his bond to $1.25 million, and the Court of Appeal let it stand.
The “indigent” litigants in Family Violence were litigants too poor to hire a court reporter. And Guzman argued that section 995.240 "was not designed to absolve a millionaire defendant of his obligation to satisfy a judgment against him or post a bond pending appeal, particularly where his victim is indigent in-fact."
But the court concluded that a millionaire can be indigent too—at least in relation to a $30 million statutory bond. The court answered that the disparity "clashes with the core concern of access to the courts by assuming this right is inapplicable above certain net worths, regardless of the burden." A litigant who cannot post a bond exceeding a high net worth "may, under certain circumstances, lack access to the courts similarly to another litigant who cannot afford to do so at a lower level exceeding their more meager resources. Access is impeded in both cases."
Still, inability to stay a $20 million judgment is a long way from paying for a court reporter. The FVAP principle traveled that distance in under a month.
To get Guzman and section 995.240 relief, be prepared with letter from a bond broker.
Wigle's opening showing was assets and hardship with no bond costs, and it failed. The trial court asked defense counsel whether Wigle "would still be indigent if it was a [$]2.5 million[ bond]," heard "[p]robably not," and ordered more declarations. What came back was a broker's quote at three levels. At $1.25 million the surety wanted an insurance guarantee and no collateral. At $2.5 million it wanted $1.25 million in cash on top. At $31 million it wanted over $30 million. Wigle could not reach the second tier without encumbering his house.
So the judge did not go soft on an eight-figure tortfeasor. He set the bond at the last number the debtor could actually obtain, which happened to be the insurance policy limit—roughly all the creditor stood to collect anyway.
Still, in most cases, a Guzman section 995.240 motion still will be unsuccessful. But consider it when these factors are present:
No insurer, no anchor, or a client who could almost make the number? The old instinct holds, and you are spending the client's money for nothing.
The evidentiary bar is lower than you would guess, and narrower. You do not need a declaration from the broker himself—section 2009 lets a declaration carry hearsay. You do not need your client's monthly or annual income and expenses; Guzman complained about their absence, and the court held the statute does not require them. You do not need proof that you applied for a bond and were turned down.
What you need is the comparison. The petitioners in Cardinal Care lost because they "provided no details of their financial situation" and merely "averred that they lacked financial ability." Wigle won because he "supported this with a list of his financial assets and how these compared to the financial requirements of obtaining bonds at different levels." Two quantities and the relationship between them: what your client holds, and what the surety demands at each level. Income and cash flow are beside the point. The question is not whether your client can make the payments. It is whether he can produce the collateral.
Guzman is not really about appeal bonds. Section 995.240 lives in the Bond and Undertaking Law, which applies to any bond "given as security pursuant to any statute of this state, except to the extent the statute prescribes a different rule or is inconsistent." (§ 995.020, subd. (a).) The waiver has always reached every statutory bond in California. What Guzman changes is who can ask for one, and it changes that everywhere at once.
Start with the preliminary injunction undertaking under section 529, where Conover began. (Conover v. Hall (1974) 11 Cal.3d 842.) After Guzman, a solvent plaintiff facing a large undertaking has an argument that never seemed available: the number, not the bank balance, is what blocks the courthouse door. The same reasoning travels to attachment undertakings, receivership bonds, undertakings to release a lis pendens, and the discretionary appellate undertaking under section 917.9. It travels most easily to the nonresident plaintiff's cost bond under section 1030, which exists to protect a defendant against unrecoverable costs and nothing more.
Then it hits something different. Security from a vexatious litigant under section 391.3 is not ordered until the court finds "no reasonable probability that the plaintiff will prevail," and the derivative-suit bond under Corporations Code section 800 works on a similar screen. Those bonds are not protecting a beneficiary against the cost of delay. They are filters, and the price is the point. Waive them for inability to pay and you have repealed them for exactly the litigants they were written to reach.
That is where section 995.020's "different rule or is inconsistent" clause will get its workout, and where section 995.240's own factors—"the character of the action or proceeding," "the potential harm to the beneficiary"—might start cutting the other way. Guzman's logic is about access to the courts. The screening statutes are about abuse of that access. Somewhere between the injunction bond and the vexatious litigant bond, equal access stops being the right frame, and no one has yet said where.
