Plaintiff Did Not Address All of the RFA Costs of Proof Sanctions Requirements, So Post-Trial Motion Denial Affirmed On Appeal.
If you are an appellant on an appeal, you must focus on the trial court’s written and/or tentative decision, concentrating on showing how each basis is legally and prejudicially erroneous. Appellant’s failure to do so in White v. County of Los Angeles, Case No. B264675 (2d Dist., Div. 3 Nov. 8, 2017) (unpublished) was fatal on appeal.
Plaintiff brought a FEHA/related claims case, losing many claims on a trial judge nonsuit and the remainder after a jury trial. Even in the wake of the loss, plaintiff filed a motion to obtain $239,967 in costs-of-proof sanctions for the defense denial of 16 requests for admissions under Code of Civil Procedure section 2033.420. The trial judge denied it in a detailed decision.
Plaintiff’s appeal was unsuccessful. The primary reason was that appellant only relied on a simplistic theory that the defense denied certain RFA facts which plaintiff proved at trial. This did not work because appellant failed to address responding party’s reasonableness/good faith, the materiality/importance of the RFAs, and requesting party’s proof of causation by only asking for expenses which were tied to RFA-related work. Expense denial affirmed.
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