Judge: Deborah C. Servino, Case: 30-2021-01214524, Date: 2022-10-07 Tentative Ruling
Plaintiff/Cross-Defendant Michael Grecco Productions, Inc.’s (“Plaintiff”) motion to compel Defendant Higbee & Associates’ (“Defendant”) further responses to special interrogatories, set one, nos. 77 through 145, is granted.
Request for Judicial Notice
Plaintiff’s request to judicially notice the Complaint in this case is denied. (ROA 81). It is unnecessary to ask the court to take judicial notice of materials previously filed in this case. “[A]ll that is necessary is to call the court’s attention to such papers.” (Weil & Brown, Cal. Practice Guide: Civil Procedure Before Trial (The Rutter Group 2021) ¶ 9.53.1a.)
Legal Standard
A party may move to compel further responses to interrogatories on the grounds that the answer is evasive or incomplete. (Code Civ. Proc., § 2030.300, subd. (a)(1).) If a timely motion to compel has been filed, the burden is on the responding party to justify any objection or failure to fully answer the interrogatories. (Fairmont Ins. Co. v. Superior Court (2000) 22 Cal.4th 245, 255.) Where the question is specific and explicit, an answer that supplies only a portion of the information sought is improper. It is also improper to provide “deftly worded conclusionary answers designed to evade a series of explicit questions.” (Deyo v. Kilbourne (1978) 84 Cal.App.3d 771, 783.)
Merits
Here, Plaintiff has moved to compel further responses to special interrogatories nos. 77-145. The initial responses consisted of objections only. (Mueller Decl., Exh. G.) After this motion was filed, Defendant served further responses to most of the discovery at issue. (Cox Decl., Exh. D.) In his reply, Plaintiff contends the further responses remain deficient. The court exercises its discretion to hear the motion as to the supplemental responses. (See Sinaiko Healthcare Consulting, Inc. v. Pacific Healthcare Consultants (2007) 148 Cal.App.4th 390, 405-407.)
As an initial matter, the further responses contain objections. But Defendant has not met its burden on this motion to justify any objections. Thus, all objections are overruled.
Moving to the merits of each response, the discovery at issue is related to Plaintiff’s third cause of action in the Complaint for breach of fiduciary duties. In this claim, Plaintiff alleges that the three contingency agreements with Defendant for legal services are invalid and voidable. To that end, all of the discovery at issue asks Defendant to“[d]escribe all time incurred” in each specific legal matter “by listing the name of YOUR employee that incurred that time, the amount of time incurred, and the hourly rate charge for that employee's time.” Plaintiff seeks to ascertain the reasonable value of the services that Defendant provided.
Defendant contends that the Agreements are valid and he did not keep track of time sheets because of the relationship was based on contingency fee agreements. After this motion was filed, Defendant provided Plaintiff with a spreadsheet of information with data obtained from its case management system to provide a good faith estimate of time spent on “pre-litigation tasks” based on data obtained from Defendant’s case management system. (Cox Decl., Exh. C.)
Special interrogatories nos. 77-85, 87, 89-100, 102-121, 123-136, 138-145 provided further responses with an hourly total of pre-litigation tasks, but no calculation for post-filing services. The interrogatories do not break down pre- and post- filing work, but these responses do.
Special interrogatory no. 86 provided no substantive response, stating, only that Defendant is “still conducting a search to ascertain what pre-litigation tasks were performed on this file, if any.” This is not responsive. The responding party must make a reasonable effort to obtain whatever information is sought; and if unable to do so, must specify why the information is unavailable and what efforts he or she made to obtain it. (See Deyo v. Kilbourne, supra, 84 Cal.App.3d at p. 782.)
Special interrogatory nos. 88 and 101 confirmed that there was no pre-litigation work performed but that Defendant could not ascertain what time was spent on post-filing work. Again, if Defendant is unable to obtain the information after a reasonable and diligent search, more is required for a Code-compliant response.
Special interrogatories nos. 122 and 137 provided no further response and remain as objections only. None of the objections were justified and are thus overruled.
Finally, Defendant notes in the further responses that he does not know the specific employees whom provided each service. (Cox Decl., Exh. C.) But again he does not indicate what efforts he undertook to determine the same.
Therefore, the motion is granted. Defendant is ordered to provide verified, Code-compliant further responses without any further objections within 20 days of the notice of ruling.
Within 30 days of the notice of ruling, Defendant is ordered to pay $2,460 in sanction to The Maloney Firm, APC.
Plaintiff shall give notice of the ruling.