Judge Lee W. Tsao, Case Number: 22NWCV00917, Date: 2023-09-06 Tentative Ruling

Judge: Lee W. Tsao, Case: 22NWCV00917, Date: 2023-09-06 Tentative Ruling

Case Number: 22NWCV00917 Hearing Date: September 6, 2023 Dept: C

castro, et al. v. oremor of riverside, et al.

CASE NO.: 22NWCV00917

HEARING: 9/6/23 @ 9:30 AM

Plaintiff’s Motion to Compel Further Responses to Request for Production is GRANTED in part.

Moving Party to give NOTICE.

Plaintiff moves to compel Defendant General Motor’s further response to Request for Production (set one) pursuant to CCP § 2031.310.

Background

On December 13, 2022, Plaintiff filed a complaint against Defendants Cerritos Dodge, Inc. for alleged negligent repair and General Motors, LLC (Defendant) for alleged violations of the Song-Beverly Act for failure to repair or repurchase Plaintiff’s vehicle.

Legal Standard

CCP § 2031.310 allows a party to file a motion compelling further answers to document requests if it finds that the response is inadequate, incomplete, or evasive, or an objection in the response is without merit or too general. The motion shall be accompanied with a meet and confer declaration. (CCP § 2031.310(b).)

Meet and Confer

The Court finds that the parties adequately met and conferred.

Discussion

Plaintiffs seek to compel further responses to Requests Nos. 16, 19-32, 37-41, 45, and 46.

The parties represent that they have met and conferred as to Requests Nos. 16, 19-32, 45, and 46 and Defendant has produced documents as to those Requests. Defendant has not supplemented its responses to the Requests to identify which documents it contends are responsive to which Request. Defendant is ordered to provide further responses to Requests Nos. 16, 19-32, 45, and 46 identifying which documents it has produced are responsive to each Request.

Requests Nos. 37-41 seek codes related to similar vehicles and customer complaints and labor operations codes from 2018 to present. Documents of Plaintiff contends that it is seeking “two .pdf files of two pages each, and appear to be taken from the appendix to some sort of manual. In dozens of cases, Defendant has produced the same four pages ….” Thus, Defendant is ordered to provide these files.

Sanctions

The court shall impose a monetary sanction against the party who unsuccessfully makes or opposes a motion to compel further responses to interrogatories or demand for production of documents unless the party subject to the sanction acted with substantial justification or the sanction would otherwise be unjust. (Code of Civ. Proc., §§ 2030.300, subd. (d), 2031.310, subd. (h), 2033.290, subd. (d).)

The Court finds that Defendant acted with substantial justification because the Court believes that the issue could have been resolved without filing a motion to compel.

According, Plaintiff’s Motion to Compel Further Responses is GRANTED in part with the limitations set forth above.