What is the effect of a judgment in favour of the injured person against a county's statutory right of action?

Perhaps the most concise means of expressing the intention found by the trial court would have been to say that upon entry of a judgment in favor of the injured person, a county's statutory right of action "merges" into the lien. This usage is common in several areas of civil procedure. Thus, under one aspect of res judicata doctrine, "a claim presented and reduced to judgment merges with the judgment and is thereby superseded. [Citation.] The claimant's remedy thereafter is to enforce the judgment; he may not reassert the claim." (Passanisi v. MeritMcBride Realtors, Inc. (1987) 190 Cal.App.3d 1496, 1510, 236 Cal.Rptr. 59.) A similar usage appears in the concept of the merger of estates, under which two lesser interests in the same property may

[244 Cal.App.4th 573]