Early Nature Of The RFAs, Unreasonableness Of Fee Request, And Failure To Provide Billing Which Correlated Time To RFA Proof Work Doomed Plaintiff’s Request.
Plaintiff in Polaris Blue Holdings, LLC v. Friedman, Case Nos. B316411 et al. (2d Dist., Div. 4 Jan. 15, 2025) (unpublished) won a judgment of $14,258.45 against two defendants and then moved for costs-of-proof sanctions under CCP § 2033.420 for a defendant’s denial of four requests for admission. The trial court denied plaintiff’s request for a $1.312 million fee award.
The 2/4 DCA affirmed for three reasons: (1) the RFA requests were made only four months into the case before any depositions were taken so the denials were not unreasonable at that juncture; (2) the fee request was unreasonable; and (3) the costs-of-proof substantiation did not correlate time entries to the tasks relating to proving the facts which were denied in the RFAs.
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