To fill out California Form CIV-090, complete the superior court header and case number exactly as they appear on your complaint, name yourself as the plaintiff and the opposing party as the defendant in Item 1, state the settlement dollar amount in Item 2 and check the sub-option that describes how costs and attorney fees will be handled, leave Item 3 (the acceptance block) blank for the defendant to sign, then sign and date the bottom and serve the form on the opposing party at least 10 days before trial. The form is the Judicial Council’s preprinted Offer to Compromise under Code of Civil Procedure Section 998, and it only works for a case with one plaintiff, one defendant, and a money judgment.
When CIV-090 Is the Right Form
CIV-090 is built for a plaintiff who wants to offer to accept a judgment in their favor for a stated dollar amount. The preprinted language reads “in favor of the plaintiff and against” the defendant, so the structure assumes the plaintiff is the one making the offer.
Three situations push you off this form and onto a custom CCP 998 letter instead:
- More than one plaintiff or more than one defendant in the case.
- A proposed settlement that requires something other than money, such as returning property or stopping certain conduct.
- A defendant who wants to propose that judgment be entered against themselves for a stated amount.
A custom letter carries the same statutory rights and the same cost-shifting consequences as the form. CIV-090 is a convenience, not a requirement. What the statute actually demands is a written offer with clear terms, properly served.
Filling Out Each Field
Download the form from the California Courts website or pick up a copy at the superior court clerk’s office. It is a single page. The fields are simple, but a mismatch between the header and your existing court filings gives the other side an argument that the offer is defective, so copy everything from your complaint or summons rather than retyping from memory.
Header and Case Information
Fill in the superior court’s name, street address, mailing address, city, zip code, and branch name. Enter the plaintiff’s name, the defendant’s name, and the case number assigned by the clerk. Match the formatting on your complaint exactly, including any abbreviations or punctuation the court uses.
Item 1: Identifying the Offer
Write the plaintiff’s name in the first blank and the defendant’s name in the second. The preprinted sentence does the legal work: the plaintiff offers to have judgment entered under Code of Civil Procedure Section 998 in favor of the plaintiff and against the named defendant. You are not drafting language here, just filling in who is who.
Item 2: The Judgment Terms
This is the field that defines what the defendant is actually agreeing to. You have two paths.
Option (a) asks for a total dollar figure, then requires you to check one of five sub-boxes describing how costs and attorney fees are treated:
- Sub-option (1): each side pays its own costs and fees.
- Sub-option (2): the dollar amount already includes both costs and fees.
- Sub-option (3): statutory costs are added on top of the dollar amount.
- Sub-option (4): costs plus a specific dollar amount for attorney fees are added on top.
- Sub-option (5): costs plus attorney fees in whatever amount the court determines appropriate under the law are added on top.
Option (b) is a blank space for custom terms if none of the sub-options fit. Keep the wording precise. Vague custom terms are a common reason CCP 998 offers get knocked out later.
The sub-option you pick under (a) matters more than it looks. Sub-option (2) tells the defendant exactly what the total exposure is. Sub-option (5) leaves the attorney fee number open for the court to decide later, which is uncertainty the defendant may not want to swallow. The cleaner and more final the number, the better the chance of acceptance.
Item 3: Leave It Blank
Item 3 is the acceptance block, preprinted for the defendant. It contains spaces for the defendant’s name, the date, and a signature line for the defendant or their attorney. You do not touch this section. The defendant fills it in and signs if they accept.
Signing the Bottom
Sign and date the bottom of the form as the offering party, or have your attorney sign. The form provides a line for the printed name of the party or attorney and a signature line.
Serving the Completed Form
Serve the completed form on the opposing party’s attorney of record, or on the party directly if they are self-represented. CCP 998 requires the offer to be served in writing but does not prescribe a method, so California’s general service rules apply: personal delivery, mail, or electronic service where it has been agreed to or ordered.
Timing is strict. The offer must be served at least 10 days before trial or arbitration begins. Serve it later than that and you lose the cost-shifting power that is the whole reason to use CCP 998. There is no minimum waiting period after a lawsuit is filed, so you can serve an offer early to put settlement pressure on the other side.
Prepare a proof of service documenting how and when you delivered the offer. If the offer is accepted, you will file the proof with the signed form. If it is rejected and you want to invoke cost-shifting after trial, the proof is what establishes that the offer was properly made and when the 30-day clock began.
The 30-Day Window
The recipient has 30 days to accept, or until trial begins, whichever comes first. If neither happens in that window, the offer is deemed withdrawn automatically.
Once served, a CCP 998 offer stays open for the full statutory period. The offeror cannot pull it back early. A counteroffer from the defendant does not terminate the original offer the way it would under ordinary contract rules; the defendant can still accept the original terms during the window.
To accept, the defendant or their attorney signs and dates Item 3 on the original form and serves the signed acceptance back on the offering party. At that moment, a binding settlement exists.
To reject, the defendant can send an express rejection or simply let 30 days pass. The legal effect is the same. A rejected or expired offer cannot be introduced at trial to prove liability or value. It stays in the court file only for post-trial cost calculations, so the jury never learns the number.
Filing an Accepted Offer
If the defendant signs the acceptance, file the completed CIV-090, the signed acceptance, and the proof of service with the court clerk. The step most people miss is in the form’s own text: the court will file the offer and acceptance only if accompanied by a judgment prepared for the court’s signature and entry of judgment.
Draft the proposed judgment so it mirrors Item 2 exactly. If you checked sub-option (a)(3), for instance, the judgment should state the dollar amount plus costs under CCP Section 1032. Once the clerk has the complete package, the judge signs and the judgment is entered. It carries the same legal force as a verdict after trial.
What Rejection Costs the Other Side
The strategic value of filing a CCP 998 offer shows up when the other side rejects it and then does worse at trial. The consequences depend on who made the offer.
If the plaintiff made the offer and the defendant rejected it, and the defendant ends up with a judgment less favorable than the offer, regular post-offer costs shift to the defendant as a matter of course. The court may also order the defendant to pay the plaintiff’s post-offer expert witness fees. The word “may” is deliberate. Expert fee shifting is discretionary, and the court weighs whether the fees were reasonably necessary and actually incurred.
If the defendant made the offer and the plaintiff rejected it, and the plaintiff’s judgment is not more favorable than the offer, the plaintiff loses the right to recover any post-offer costs and must pay the defendant’s post-offer costs. The court may also require the plaintiff to pay the defendant’s post-offer expert witness fees. Under CCP 998(e), those costs come directly out of the plaintiff’s damages. If the costs exceed the damages, the net flips and judgment is entered for the defendant for the difference.
The Good Faith Requirement
A CCP 998 offer only triggers cost-shifting if it was made in good faith. California courts ask whether the offer was realistically reasonable under the circumstances and carried some reasonable prospect of acceptance. A token offer, such as $1 to settle a case with significant liability exposure, will not shift costs because no reasonable party would accept it.
Courts evaluate what the offeror reasonably knew at the time the offer was made, not what turned out to be true at trial. An offer that looks low in hindsight may still have been reasonable when served. If you are making an offer mainly to engineer a cost-shifting argument rather than to resolve the case, expect a court to see it and deny the shift.