Judge: Lee S. Arian, Case: 22STCV13398, Date: 2024-11-06 Tentative Ruling

Case Number: 22STCV13398    Hearing Date: November 6, 2024    Dept: 27

Hon. Lee S. Arian, Dept 27

MOTIONS TO COMPEL INITIAL RESPONSES AND REQUESTS FOR SANCTIONS

Hearing Date: 11/6/24 

CASE NO./NAME: 22STCV13398 MICHAEL ODJAGHIAN vs ESMIRALDA GOMEZ, et al.

Moving Party: Defendants Esmeralda Gomez and Maria Gomez

Responding Party: Unopposed

Notice: Sufficient 

Ruling: GRANTED 

On July 1, 2024, Defendants Esmeralda Gomez and Maria Gomez served Plaintiff with Defendants’ Supplemental Interrogatories, Set One, Supplemental Requests for Production, Set One, and Requests for Admission, Set One. Pursuant to an agreed-upon extension, Plaintiff’s deadline to respond was extended to August 9, 2024. Plaintiff failed to serve the discovery responses by this extended deadline. Defendants subsequently attempted multiple times to communicate with Plaintiff’s prior and current counsel regarding the overdue responses, but Plaintiff has yet to provide any responses. Defendants now move to compel responses to the discovery requests at issue.

Plaintiff did not file an opposition or any document indicating that the responses were served before the hearing. Accordingly, the motions to compel are granted. Plaintiff is hereby ordered to serve complete, verified responses to Defendants’ Supplemental Interrogatories, Set One, and Supplemental Requests for Production, Set One, within 20 days of this order, without objections. Additionally, the contents of Defendants' Requests for Admission, Set One, are deemed admitted.

Defendants request sanctions of $882.50 per motion. Sanctions are mandatory and the court does not find Plaintiff to have acted with substantial justification as defense counsel made multiple attempts and offered numerous extensions for Plaintiff to provide the discovery responses, which were still not provided. However, given the straightforward nature of the issues and the lack of opposition, the court reduces the sanction to $1,500 for all three motions, payable jointly and severally by Plaintiff and his attorney to Defendants within 20 days of today.

PLEASE TAKE NOTICE: 

If a party intends to submit on this tentative ruling,¿the party must send an email to the court at¿sscdept27@lacourt.org¿with the Subject line “SUBMIT” followed by the case number.¿The body of the email must include the hearing date and time, counsel’s contact information, and the identity of the party submitting.

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If the parties neither submit nor appear at hearing, the Court may take the motion off calendar or adopt the tentative ruling as the order of the Court.¿ After the Court has issued a tentative ruling, the Court may prohibit the withdrawal of the subject motion.