Judge: Theodore R. Howard, Case: 19-1093259, Date: 2022-09-01 Tentative Ruling

Defendant, cross-complainant, and cross-defendant South Orange County Community College District moves for an order compelling plaintiff Gary Glick to provide a verified further response to its first set of requests for admissions.  Moving party also asks for an order imposing a monetary sanction of $1560 against plaintiff. 

The separate statement indicated that only request 1 is in issue.  This request is:

Admit that you saw how the chairs were stacked before you attempted to move them.

The answer to request 1 is: 

OTHER:  Objection, this request is vague, ambiguous, as to the phrase “how the chairs were stacked.”  Plaintiff will not venture to speculate as to the nature of information being sought.  On that basis, Plaintiff is unable to admit or deny.

The moving party’s argument in the separate statement as to why a supplemental answer should be compelled is cut and pasted from his meet and confer letter and is:

I think you may misunderstand the Request.  It is not asking if Mr. Glick saw the chairs while they were being stacked, but rather that he saw and appreciated the manner in which they were stacked prior to attempting to move them.  We have evidence that he did, of course, because he described the stack has [sic] having 8-10 chairs in it (you have objected to this, but it is not worth fighting over in court).  We knew that there were 8-10 in the stack, and the top three were askew.  we wanted to nail that down in these Requests too, and you have objected to those. 

The purpose of this admission is to avoid having to put on testimony regarding this.  Once it is established that Mr. Glick admits seeing the stack before he moved it, your client’s negligence for failure to take reasonable care for his own safety will be before the jury.  This is critical, of course. 

While this motion may seem like a no-brainer, there are a couple of points to consider. 

First, a party cannot compel another party to admit a request, regardless of whether of whether an admission should be a given.  See Holguin v. Superior Court (1972) 22 Cal.App.3d 812, 820.  (“It may well be that from their point of view defendants might be better off, in the long run, if instead of denying all the requests outright, they had denied some of them for lack of information or belief. It may also be that after a trial it will appear that plaintiffs are entitled to financial sanctions under subdivision (c), section 2033.420 of the Code of Civil Procedure. We do not see, however, how any court can force a litigant to admit any particular fact if he is willing to risk a perjury prosecution or financial sanctions.” 

Second, plaintiff opposes the motion based on the lack of a reasonable and good faith attempt to meet and confer before bringing the motion, and this contention has merit. By moving party’s own admission, the only attempt to meet and confer by its counsel before filing the motion was to send a letter by email to plaintiff’s counsel.  The email received by plaintiff’s counsel (Exhibit A to the declaration of plaintiff’s counsel) simply shows that correspondence by counsel is attached; it does not indicate that there is a “meet and confer” letter or otherwise even use the term “meet and confer.”  Counsel for moving party could have picked up the phone or even sent a hard copy of the letter by snail mail when no response to the meet and confer letter was received.

RULING:  The motion of defendant, cross-complainant, and cross-defendant South Orange County Community College District for an order compelling plaintiff Gary Glick to provide a verified further response to its first set of requests for admissions and imposing a monetary sanction of $1560 against plaintiff is DENIED in its entirety.