Judge: Mark H. Epstein, Case: 19SMCV01088, Date: 2023-03-08 Tentative Ruling

The Court generally uploads tentative rulings the morning of the hearing.  Because of that, the parties cannot submit on the tentative the night before and not appear.  However, if after reviewing the tentative ruling ALL COUNSEL submit, they should tell the Court's judicial assistant when checking in and the Court will endeavor to either not hear the case in light of the submission or, if the Court believes that a hearing is still needed for some other reason, then the Court will be inclined to give priority.

In some cases, tentative rulings may be given by email the morning of the hearing rather than on the tentative ruling site.  Please check your email if you have not seen the tentative.  The email is generally sent to the persons who have signed up for a remote hearing.

For those appearing in the courtroom, the Court will provide a hard copy of the tentative ruling. 

Case Number: 19SMCV01088    Hearing Date: March 8, 2023    Dept: R

The court will discuss the matter with counsel.  The goal here is to get a meaningful 473c(t) motion so that the court can separate the viable damages theories from those that are not viable (if any).  That may well mean that experts need to be deposed in a meaningful way before the briefing is really underway.  The court understands that the process is taking significantly longer than people thought, largely due to things beyond anyone’s control.  But we are where we are. 

The court generally agrees that if plaintiff’s experts are not going to have federal style reports, their depositions become critical and that it makes little sense to depose the defense experts before plaintiff’s experts, although that may not be true uniformly. 

The court expects that the parties will work quickly and diligently, so continuances should be relatively short, not long.  They do, however, need to be reasonable.  The court will do its best to help the parties reach agreement, but the court also notes that it is in trial so that it cannot really take the time it might otherwise take to discuss and broker a deal.  The court strongly urges the parties to meet early during the calendar and see if they can come up with a reasonable schedule in light of the foregoing concerns.

The court also emphasizes that the goal of the 473c(t) motion is not for the court to ascertain the amount of damages recoverable; only viability.  The amount of damages will ultimately be for the trier of fact so long as the legal and factual theory is legitimate.  The court makes this point because at least some of the expert discovery likely goes to amount, and that is of less urgency to the court for purposes of this motion.  (Having said that, the court recognizes it the point is not all that helpful.  The deposition will undoubtedly need to cover both aspects even though both may not be at issue for the 473c(t) motion.)