In Bright v. American Termite Control Co. (1990) 220 Cal.App.3d 1464, the individual plaintiffs had filed an action for personal injuries and property damages against various alleged tortfeasors. (Bright, supra, 220 Cal.App.3d at pp. 1466-1467.) After their insurer (Allstate) compensated them for some of their losses (id. at p. 1467, fn. 2), it filed a complaint in intervention, asserting causes of action "identical" to the plaintiffs' (id. at p. 1467). The plaintiffs then settled with the defendants. (Ibid.) The trial court dismissed Allstate's complaint in intervention because it was not brought to trial within five years after the filing of the plaintiffs' original complaint. (Id. at pp. 1467-1468.) The appellate court affirmed. It recognized that "in the context of cross-complaints, counterclaims and separate lawsuits subsequently consolidated . . . , the Supreme Court has held that the time for bringing the claim to trial runs from the filing of such cross-complaint, counterclaim or separate but consolidated lawsuit. The court's rationale was that each claim stated a separate cause of action which could have been separately brought and tried and they were thus distinct though simultaneous actions with their own independent time frames for the purposes of the mandatory dismissal statute. " (Bright, supra, 220 Cal.App.3d at p. 1468.) It held, however, that a subrogation claim was "distinguishable" from "the separate causes of action involved in a cross-complaint, counterclaim or separate but consolidated lawsuit," at least when the subrogee is asserting "essentially the same causes of action" as the subrogor. (Ibid.)