Judge: Mark H. Epstein, Case: 23SMCV02233, Date: 2025-04-11 Tentative Ruling

Case Number: 23SMCV02233    Hearing Date: April 11, 2025    Dept: I

The court has before it a motion to continue the trial and FSC.  The FSC order was given on November 29, 2023.  No FSC materials have been filed and the parties seek to continue the matter because they would like to mediate and they have more to do.  The court normally would deny the request.  The parties had more than enough time to get the case ready for trial after the FSC order was given, and the court specifically warned the parties that they needed to start the process well in advance.  The court set a mediation completion date of July 31, 2024, which date was selected by the parties.  In short, the court does not find that there is any compelling justification to continue the trial.  Except one.

The trial is currently set for April 21, 2025.  The court is currently engaged in a trial that will take the week, most likely.  After that, the court has a short trial that will take some of the following week.  After that, the court has a four week trial that is ready to go.  And there is another long trial that might, or might not, be ready to go and is trailing.  Given that, there is no reasonable likelihood that the court will be available to try this case on April 21, 2025, nor does it make sense to trail the case from day to day until the court opens up because the length of time the case would trail is not appropriate.  That was not the case some time ago, when the parties earlier tried to continue the case, but it is the situation now.

No purpose would be served to deny the request to continue, other than to impose hardship (which is not a good reason).  Given that, the court will VACATE the trial date and set a TSC to follow the mediation.  The court makes no guarantees as to when the matter will be restored to the trial calendar, but warns that it could be a long time.