Judge Lee S. Arian, Case Number: 22STCV32424, Date: 2024-08-29 Tentative Ruling

Judge: Lee S. Arian, Case: 22STCV32424, Date: 2024-08-29 Tentative Ruling

Case Number: 22STCV32424 Hearing Date: August 29, 2024 Dept: 27

Hon. Lee S. Arian, Dept 27

MOTION FOR RELIEF FROM WAIVER OF OBJECTIONS

Hearing Date: 8/29/24¿

CASE NO./NAME: 22STCV32424 NARCISA GUZMAN OSORIO vs ALISA MARGARET GABAY, et al.

Moving Party: Defendant Alisa Gabay

Responding Party: Plaintiff¿

Notice: Sufficient¿

Ruling: MOTION FOR RELIEF FROM WAIVER OF OBJECTIONS

IS DENIED.

Background

On May 24, 2024, Plaintiff propounded several sets of written discovery on all four defendants, including Defendant Alisa Gabay. Defendant's counsel alleged that she incorrectly calendared the deadline to respond to the written discovery for Defendant Gabay. As a result, no responses were served to Plaintiff’s Requests for admissions and Form Interrogatories, Set Two, for Defendant Gabay by the statutory deadline of June 25, 2024. Form Interrogatories, Set Two, consist of a single interrogatory, 17.1, concerning the requests for admissions. On June 26, 2024, Defendant’s counsel became aware of the mistake, when Plaintiff's counsel emailed Defendant regarding the overdue discovery responses. On July 3, 2024, Defendant served late responses to Plaintiff with objections and requested Plaintiff for relief from waiver, to which Plaintiff refused. Defendant now moves the Court for relief from waiver of objections pursuant to Code Civ. Proc. §§ 2030.290 and 2033.280

Legal Standard

A party who waived its objections by failing to serve a timely response may be relieved of that waiver if (1) the party subsequently serves a response in substantial compliance, and (2) the party’s failure to serve a timely response was the result of mistake, inadvertence, or excusable neglect. (Code Civ. Proc. §§ 2030.290(a), 2033.280(a).)

In St Mary v. Superior Court (2014) 223 Cal.App.4th 762, the court defined substantial compliance as “actual compliance in respect to the substance essential to every reasonable objective of the statute.” (Id.) Substantial compliance does not require actual compliance with every specific statutory requirement. (Id.)]

The objective of requests for admissions is to narrow discovery, eliminate undisputed issues, and shift the cost of proving certain matters. “As such, requests for admission are not a means by which a party obtains additional information, but rather a dispute resolution device that eliminates the time and expense of formal proof at trial." (City of Glendale v. Marcus Cable Associates, LLC (2015) 235 Cal.App.4th 348, 353-354.)

Discussion

All but one of Defendant’s responses to the requests for admissions contained the response: "Responding Party admits negligence but denies causation." Under St. Mary, the Court is not to take a piecemeal approach by examining each response on a request-by-request basis but should instead consider the responses as a whole. The Court is not permitted to segregate each individual RFA response to determine which portions are code-compliant and will be accepted, while rejecting noncompliant portions. (St. Mary, 223 Cal.App.4th at 780.)

The Court finds Defendant’s response to be not substantially compliant. Specifically, it violates Code of Civil Procedure section 2033.220(a), which requires that each answer in a response to requests for admission be as complete and straightforward as the information reasonably available to the responding party permits. Instead, the response is contradictory. A party cannot be liable for negligence if causation, one of its essential elements, is negated. Contrary to the purpose of Requests for Admission, which is to eliminate undisputed issues, the contradictory response provided by Defendant does not serve this purpose. Plaintiff cannot introduce these responses to the jury or attach them to a motion for summary judgment to eliminate the issue of negligence.

Defendant argues that Plaintiff's requests for admission are vague and overbroad, open to multiple interpretations. However, as demonstrated in St. Mary, a party may add qualifiers to their response to limit the scope or confine the responses to Defendant's understanding of the question if it is vague or subject to multiple interpretations.

In applying the substantial compliance standard, the Court in St. Mary found an admission or denial to be in substantial compliance even when the admissions were “not unequivocal and [were] incomplete” and contained additional language besides an admission or denial. (St. Mary, 223 Cal.App.4th at 780–81). Specifically, in St Mary, the court reviewed a subset of the RFA responses at issue and determined they met the criteria for substantial compliance: St. Mary's response to RFA No. 20 (“Admit you attended a meeting with David Nilsen on or about January 13, 2006”) was “Admit. Thomas Schellenberg was also present.” This response admitted the statement and was not improper. St. Mary's response to RFA No. 27 (“Admit that you intended on purchasing a fractional interest in a real estate secured note and deed of trust from Cedar Funding, Inc.”) was “Admit, first position only.” This was also a proper admission to the statement, and the fact that it included a short statement further explaining the nature of St. Mary's intent beyond what was included in the RFA did not render the response improper. St. Mary's response to RFA No. 88 (“Admit that you knew during the month of March 2008, that there were problems at Cedar Funding, Inc.”) was: “Deny. There seemed to be rational explanations for tardiness.” This response was a straightforward denial that included an explanation as to the reason the statement was denied. (Id. at 781.)

A host of other cases and practice guides have reached a similar conclusion: Although “[a] denial of all or any portion of the request must be unequivocal [citation] ... reasonable qualifications are not improper.” (Weil & Brown, Cal. Practice Guide: Civil Procedure Before Trial, supra, ¶8:1332.1, p. 8G–16; (rev. # 1, 2012); see also Hogan and Weber, 1 Cal. Civil Discovery, supra, § 9.11, pp. 9–25 to 9–26.) Thus, for instance, the RFA response, “ ‘As framed, denied,’ ” was held to constitute a legally sufficient denial. (Smith v. Circle P Ranch Co. (1978) 87 Cal.App.3d 267, 275; see also Holguin v. Superior Court (1972) 22 Cal.App.3d 812, 820 & fn. 9, [RFA responses proper despite “rather weaseling qualification attached to most of them that they are made on advice of counsel”].)

Here, however, the added language of the response is not an explanation, but a contradiction. That is not substantial compliance. And it does not serve the purpose of requests for admission: rather than narrow issues, it obfuscates.

Defendant rgues in the reply that “The term ‘INCIDENT’ as used throughout the Requests for Admissions is overly broad enough to include Plaintiff’s allege injuries, which defense dispute on causation of injuries. Defense disputes the full nature and extent of Plaintiff’s alleged injuries and treatment.”

Defendant appears to argue that it disputes damages and alleges that Defendant did not cause all the damages alleged by Plaintiff. However, the responses as stated “the responding party admits negligence but denies causation” do not support this interpretation. First, nowhere in the response does it mention damages. Second, the common understanding of the term "causation" pertains to one of the elements of negligence. Third, the requests for admission do not seek information relating to damages; for example, RFA No. 24 states, "Admit that you contend that Defendant Alisa Margaret Gabay caused the incident." This question does not elicit any information relating to damages, and there is no context in which a reasonable person would understand the responses as explained by Defendant in the reply.

When assessed as a whole, the discovery responses here are not substantially compliant. Therefore, the court denies the present motion.

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 without leave.