Judge: Lee S. Arian, Case: 22STCV29753, Date: 2024-08-16 Tentative Ruling

Case Number: 22STCV29753    Hearing Date: August 16, 2024    Dept: 27

Hon. Lee S. Arian, Dept 27

MOTION TO COMPEL INITIAL RESPONSES AND REQUESTS FOR SANCTIONS

Hearing Date: 8/16/24 

CASE NO./NAME: 22STCV29753 WALTER MOORE, et al. vs ENTERPRISE HOLDINGS, INC. et al. 

Moving Party: Defendant Enterprise 

Responding Party: Plaintiff 

Notice: Sufficient 

Ruling: MOTION TO COMPEL INITIAL RESPONSES ARE DENIED AND REQUESTS FOR SANCTIONS ARE GRANTED 

On April 25, 2024, Defendant Enterprise Rent-A-Car Company served its Interrogatories, Set One, Special Interrogatories Set One, Request for Admissions (RFA), Set One, and Request for Production (RFP), Set One, on Plaintiff. The responses were due on May 27, 2024. Defendant granted Plaintiff several extensions, with the last one being on July 8, 2024. No responses were provided by that deadline, and as of July 24, 2024, when the present motions were filed, Defendant now moves the Court to compel initial responses and deem the contents of RFA, Set One, admitted.

On August 7, 2024, Plaintiff filed an opposition along with his responses to the discovery requests at issue.  The responses are complete and verified responses without objections. Thus, the present motions are moot. Defendant argues that the responses are not code-compliant; however, that is the subject matter of a motion to compel further responses and is not within the purview of the present motions.

Defendant provided Plaintiff with multiple extensions and explicitly stated that no further extensions would be granted beyond July 8, 2024, warning that a motion to compel would be filed if no responses were served by that deadline. Despite this, Plaintiff did not serve any responses by the aforementioned deadline, and Defendant deferred filing the present motion until July 24, 2024, by which time no responses still had been provided. Under these circumstances, the Court finds that sanctions are appropriate, as sanctions are partially intended to compensate for the attorney fees incurred in obtaining discovery responses. Here, the filing of the motion appeared necessary since the discovery responses were only provided after the motion was filed. Nevertheless, given the straightforward nature of the issues, the Court reduces the amount of sanctions to $2,000 for all four motions. The Court hereby ORDERS sanction in the amount of $2,000 against Plaintiff and his counsel jointly and severally, payable to Defendant Enterprise within 20 days from 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.

Unless¿all¿parties submit by email to this tentative ruling, the parties should arrange to appear remotely (encouraged) or in person for oral argument.¿You should assume that others may appear at the hearing to argue.

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.