Levin v. Ligon (2006) 140 Cal.App.4th 1456, determined that a settlement may in some instances fulfill the successful assertion requirement for judicial estoppel. In Levin v. Ligon, the plaintiff sued his former wife in California for a partition of financial assets held in her name. (Id. at p. 1459.) In the prior action, husband sued his English attorney in an English court for malpractice, which husband claimed occurred when the attorney failed to advise him that, under English law, he would lose his claim to the former wife's financial assets (known as "ancillary relief") if he remarried. (Id. at pp. 1460-1461.) Husband settled his malpractice suit. (Id. at p. 1461.) "According to the Queen's Bench Division of the High Court of Justice in England, this sum represented: '"The difference between the amount Levin would have received had he been able to make an ancillary relief application under the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 (as amended), and the sum of US $ 320,000 being the amount received in his subsequent application under section 17 of the Married Women's Property Act 1882 (as amended)," ' but for the negligence of his attorney." (Id. at p. 1461.) In determining that the settlement in that case was sufficient to satisfy the success element, the court noted that Jackson acknowledged that the circumstances of a case " ' "may warrant application of the doctrine even if the earlier position was not adopted by the tribunal."" (Levin v. Ligon, supra, 140 Cal.App.4th at p. 1477.) The court concluded that "the pivotal issue is whether it can be established that the party succeeded in the first position or that the position was a basis or important to the settlement." (Ibid.) The court was able to determine that Levin had triumphed by inducing his former attorney to surrender, thus establishing that Levin's claim the attorney had been negligent was a basis for the settlement. (Id. at p. 1478.) The English court indicated that the amount of the settlement represented the value of the assets he would have received absent his former attorney's negligence. (Id. at p. 1461.) Thus, the California court could establish that the husband's successful position in the settlement was that he had no right to share his former wife's financial assets, whereas the point of the California action was to assert his rights in the same assets.