In Salehi v. Surfside III Condominium Owners Assn. (2011) 200 Cal.App.4th 1146, the plaintiff condominium owner sued the defendant condominium homeowners association to enforce certain covenants, conditions, and restrictions. The plaintiff dismissed eight out of her ten causes of action on the eve of trial after she had lost a similar case in another county. She contended that the unavailability of her expert due to illness required her to dismiss these claims, albeit two claims remained for trial. Shortly thereafter, the plaintiff moved to continue the trial on the remaining two claims because of her expert's unavailability; the trial court granted the continuance. The association moved to recover its fees as the prevailing party on the dismissed claims under former section 1354, subdivision (c) (current section 5975), which provided for attorney fees to the prevailing party. It argued that the motivation for the dismissal was not the illness of the plaintiff's expert, but instead the plaintiff's defeat in the other case. (Salehi, supra, 200 Cal.App.4th at pp. 1151--1152.) The trial court denied the association's request for attorney fees because it had not prevailed on a "'practical level'" and the dismissal was due more to the plaintiff's "'inexperience and poor decisions'" than any concession that her claims lacked merit. (Salehi, supra, 200 Cal.App.4th at p. 1152.) Division Six of the Second Appellate District reversed. It reiterated the rule that the dismissal alone did not make the defendant the prevailing party under Code of Civil Procedure section 1032. The appellate court, however, concluded that the trial court had abused its discretion in not finding the defendant to be the prevailing party because the "record does not suggest that Salehi would have prevailed on the merits. It does not appear that she was ready to go forward procedurally and prove the case substantively" (Salehi, at p. 1155), and she knew she could have requested a continuance to accommodate her expert's illness, and in fact had done so three days after she dismissed the majority of her claims (ibid.).