Judge: David A. Hoffer, Case: 30-2019-1076984, Date: 2022-10-07 Tentative Ruling

The unopposed motions of defendant 24HRC to compel plaintiff Ping Ren to respond without objection to (1) Special Interrogatories, (2) Requests for Production of Documents, (3) form interrogatories and for sanctions is GRANTED.

On December 16, 2021, 24HRC served Plaintiff with the subject discovery.  24HRC subsequently granted Plaintiff two extensions to respond to this written discovery, pushing the responses’ due date from January 18, 2022 to February 15, 2022. (Aaronian Decl. ¶¶ 4-5)  On April 15, 2022, 24HRC sent Plaintiff a meet-and-confer letter.  On April 16, 2022, Plaintiff sent email to defendant stating: “I just returned from medical leave and have your discovery requests on my list of things to do.  I will need a couple of weeks.”  Further exchanges between counsel resulted in plaintiff’s counsel stating that responses would be served on May 14, 2022.

On May 27, 2022, the subject motions were filed and included  declarations from counsel that no responses had yet been received.  Later on that same date, plaintiff’s counsel sent an email claiming that he had served the responses on February 15, 2022. 

Plaintiff filed no opposition to these motions, but defendant did file a Reply which attached the May 27, 2022 email and responses.  The responses were not verified as required under the Code of Civil Procedure.  Accordingly, it is as though there were no responses served.  (See Appleton v. Superior Ct. (1988) 206 Cal.App.3d 632, 635-636 (“The responses were provided in this case but they were not verified. Unsworn responses are tantamount to no responses at all.”)).

Thus, defendant 24HRC’s unopposed motions to compel Plaintiff Ping Ren to respond without objection to the written discovery are granted.   Plaintiff is ordered to provide verified responses without objection to the subject discovery within 15 days of the date of the hearing on these motions.

Furthermore, the court orders the plaintiff to pay $420 per motion ($1,260 total) in sanctions to defendant 24 HRC, through its counsel of record, within 60 days of the hearing on these motions.  

Moving party is ordered to give notice of this ruling.