$35,595 Fee Award Under CCP § 2033.420(a) Reversed Based On Early Nature Of RFAs And Lack Of Supporting Evidence Of Trial Proof To Correlate Against RFA Denials.
Universal Home Improvement, Inc. v. Robertson, Case Nos. A157067/A157562 (1st Dist., Div. 2 June 24, 2020) (published) has some nice tips to litigators seeking to obtain “costs of proof” sanctions against a litigant who may have denied requests for admissions without a reasonable basis, which can trigger fee recovery under CCP § 2033.420(a).
What happened here is that a different judge other than the trial judge awarded “costs of proof” sanctions against plaintiffs to the tune of $35,595 in attorney’s fees when the defense prevailed in a fraudulent transfer action.
That award was reversed as a matter of law, with the appellate court finding it was an abuse of discretion. It, first of all, found that RFAs seeking a response that a “plaintiff has no case” early on in a suit should not ordinarily give rise to “cost of proof” sanctions, because that would be a strict liability exposure for any prosecuting litigant even though things were at an early stage of a matter. However, more into the weeds, the defense failed to provide any trial testimony to show why the denied requests were sanctionable, given that most of the facts were vigorously contested at trial. Simply drawing a straight line from the admissions to the ultimate result did not support sanctions under section 2033.420(a), especially in a contested matter with lots of conflicting testimony. We believe that this demonstrates that there needs to be some supporting trial testimony, in moving papers, to show why the denials would lead to “costs of proof” sanctions in most situations.
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