Judge: Mark H. Epstein, Case: 25SMCV01271, Date: 2025-04-14 Tentative Ruling

Case Number: 25SMCV01271    Hearing Date: April 14, 2025    Dept: I

The parties need to stop this and stop it now.  This is a UD case, so the court well understands that there are short timelines.  Plaintiff claims that it served defendants on March 13, 2025, and March 24, 2025.  As such, responses were due last week.  But defendants served motions to quash.  They were initially calendared for July, but in response to a request by plaintiff to advance the hearing, defendants filed a 170.6 challenge against the judge to whom the case was assigned and the matter was re-assigned to this department.  Alas for the defense, that resulted in the hearings being re-calendared for April 30, 2025 and May 1, 2025.  

Given that, the ex parte will be DENIED.  The hearings will go forward as scheduled.  If the motions are granted, then plaintiff will need to re-serve (and the court will be glad it did not default the defense).  If the motions are denied, defendants should assume that they might not have more than 1 court day to file a responsive pleading.  It might be more, but the court will not guarantee it.

Plaintiff’s earlier suggestion to the defense that counsel accept service and the parties would agree on a response date that gave the defense adequate time was a good one and ought to have been accepted.  The court does not know why defendants chose to reject that option, other than the obvious inference that the court will not utter aloud.  On the other hand, setting this ex parte for a time that plaintiff’s counsel knows defense counsel will be out of town and that there is no one available to cover the hearing also does not seem to be consistent with the Queensberry Rules, although the court does appreciate plaintiff’s counsel’s candor in disclosing this issue.