Motion to Compel Discovery with Sanctions in MARGARITA HERRERA VS. CITY AND COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO ET AL| Trellis.Law

On July 30, 2019 a Party Discovery was filed involving a dispute between Herrera, Margarita, and City And County Of San Francisco, Does 1 Through 15, for OTHER NON EXEMPT COMPLAINTS in the District Court of San Francisco County.

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1 DENNIS J. HERRERA, State Bar #139669
City Attorney
2 KATHARINE HOBIN PORTER, State Bar #173180 ELECTRONICALLY
Chief Labor Attorney F I L E D
3 ERIN KUKA, State Bar #275042 Superior Court of California,
County of San Francisco
Deputy City Attorney
4 Fox Plaza 06/17/2020
1390 Market Street, 5th Floor Clerk of the Court
BY: RONNIE OTERO
5 San Francisco, California 94102-5408 Deputy Clerk
Telephone: (415) 554-4229
6 Facsimile: (415) 554-4248
E-Mail: erin.kuka@sfcityatty.org
7

8 Attorneys for Defendant
CITY AND COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO
9

10 SUPERIOR COURT OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

11 COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO

12 UNLIMITED JURISDICTION

13 MARGARITA HERRERA, Case No. CGC-19-578026

14 Plaintiff, DISCOVERY

15 vs. MEMORANDUM OF POINTS AND
AUTHORITIES IN SUPPORT OF
16 CITY AND COUNTY OF SAN DEFENDANT CITY AND COUNTY OF SAN
FRANCISCO, FRANCISCO’S OPPOSITION TO
17 PLAINTIFF’S MOTION TO COMPEL
Defendant. FURTHER RESPONSES TO PLAINTIFF’S
18 FIRST SET OF REQUESTS FOR
PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS, FIRST SET
19 OF REQUESTS FOR ADMISSION AND FORM
INTERROGATORIES – EMPLOYMENT (SET
20 ONE) AND FOR AN AWARD OF A
MONETARY SANCTION AGAINST
21 DEFENDANT IN THE AMOUNT OF $2,597.50

22 Hearing Date: June 30, 2020
Hearing Judge: Hon. Ethan P. Schulman
23 Time: 9:00 a.m.
Place: Dept. 302
24
Date Action Filed: July 30, 2019
25 Trial Date: January 25, 2021

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1 TABLE OF CONTENTS

2 TABLE OF AUTHORITIES ...........................................................................................................3
I. INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................4
3
II. THE PARTIES’ MEET AND CONFER .................................................................4
4
III. THE COURT SHOULD DENY PLAINTIFF’S MOTION. ...................................7
5 A. The Court Should Deny Plaintiff’s Request to Strike the City’s
6 Objections. ...................................................................................................7
B. The Court Should Deny Plaintiff’s Request to Order Supplemental
7 Responses.....................................................................................................9
8 C. The Court Should Deny Plaintiff’s Request to Impose Sanctions Against
the City. ......................................................................................................12
9
IV. DUE TO PLAINTIFF’S ABUSE OF DISCOVERY, THE COURT SHOULD
10 AWARD THE CITY SANCTIONS FOR COUNSEL’S TIME IN OPPOSING
THIS MOTION. .....................................................................................................13
11

19
20

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1 TABLE OF AUTHORITIES

2 Cases
Calcor Space Facility, Inc. v. Superior Court,
3 53 Cal.App.4th 216 (1997) ....................................................................................................4, 13
4
Deyo v. Kilbourne
5 84 Cal.App.3d 771 (1978) .........................................................................................................12

6 Mills v. U.S. Bank
166 Cal.App.4th 871 (2008) ........................................................................................................9
7
Obregon v. Superior Court
8 67 Cal.App.4th 424 (1998) ................................................................................................7, 8, 13
9 Rules
10 California Rule of Court
§ 3.1345(c) ...................................................................................................................................9
11

19
20

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1 I. INTRODUCTION

2 Plaintiff Margarita Herrera’s Motion to Compel Further Responses violates both the letter and

3 spirit of the Discovery Act, and accordingly Defendant, the City and County of San Francisco (“the

4 City”) not only opposes the motion, but also requests that the Court award the City sanctions for

5 counsel’s time in opposing it. Plaintiff’s motion egregiously violates the Discovery Act because: (1)

6 the City has already agreed to supplement its answers to resolve many of Plaintiff’s concerns forming

7 the basis for her motion; (2) Plaintiff raises several issues for the first time in her motion, without

8 having raised them during meet and confer; and (3) Plaintiff made multiple misrepresentations about

9 the parties’ meet and confer to the Court. As the Court of Appeal noted in the Calcor Space Facility

10 case, “Courts must insist discovery devices be used as tools to facilitate litigation rather than as

11 weapons to wage litigation[,]” and “…judges must become more aggressive in curbing these abuses.”

12 Calcor Space Facility, Inc. v. Superior Court, 53 Cal.App.4th 216, 221 (1997). 1

13 II. THE PARTIES’ MEET AND CONFER

14 On September 11, 2019, Plaintiff served her complaint on the Mayor’s Office in San Francisco.

15 Apparently on October 1, 2019, Plaintiff served a Request for Production, Set One; Request for

16 Admissions; and Form Interrogatories – Employment on the Mayor’s Office. It took several days for

17 the mail to be routed to counsel for the City, who had not yet been assigned to or appeared in the case.

18 On October 8, 2019, counsel for the City requested a 60-day extension due to her prearranged

19 intermittent leave throughout the months of October and November. See October 8, 2019 email from

20 Erin Kuka to Deborah Kochan, Kuka Decl. Ex. 1. The City served written responses to Plaintiff’s

21 Requests on December 30, 2019, and produced 4,946 pages of documents alongside the written

22 responses.

23 Contrary to Plaintiff’s representation to the court, meet and confer efforts have not “been

24 largely ignored.” To the contrary, despite the fact that the parties’ meet and confer occurred during a

25 global pandemic and under shelter in place, while counsel for the City was also assisting with issues

26
1
27 For convenience, the Calcor Space Facility case is appended as Exhibit 9 to the Declaration
of Erin Kuka filed in Support of the City’s Opposition to Plaintiff’s motion (“Kuka Decl.”).
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1 related to the City’s emergency response which necessarily had to take priority, the City has

2 continually endeavored to work with Plaintiff to resolve her concerns.

3 Contrary to Plaintiff’s representation to the court, Plaintiff did not “[lay] out her concerns in

4 detail” in her February 11, 2020 email. Plaintiff’s Memorandum and Points and Authorities in

5 Support of Her Motion to Compel (“Plaintiff’s MPA”) at 2. As the email (appended as Exhibit A to

6 the Declaration of Deborah Kochan ISO Plaintiff’s Motion (“Kochan Decl.”) clearly shows, Plaintiff

7 merely stated that she had concerns about the City’s objections (without identifying which objections),

8 and proposed a stipulation that would, essentially, waive all legal effect of the City’s properly-

9 interposed objections. This stipulation is obviously not a reasonable proposal.

10 Contrary to Plaintiff’s representation to the court, the City responded to Plaintiff’s February

11 11, 2020 email the very next day. February 12 email from Erin Kuka to Deborah Kochan, Kuka

12 Decl. Ex. 2. It is untruthful to state that “Despite several follow-up emails, Plaintiff received no

13 response at all for nearly two months.” Plaintiff’s MPA at 2. Instead, in its February 12th email, the

14 City stated that it would watch for Plaintiff’s meet and confer letter, and that the City would not agree

15 to stipulate to resolve a dispute over objections without knowing exactly which objections Plaintiff

16 believed to be improper. February 12 email from Erin Kuka to Deborah Kochan, Kuka Decl. Ex. 2.

17 Contrary to Plaintiff’s representation to the court, Plaintiff’s other emails did not go

18 unanswered for nearly two months. 2 Rather, the City responded to Plaintiff’s March 4, 2020 email

19 that same day. March 4 email from Erin Kuka to Deborah Kochan, Kuka Decl. Ex. 3. Similarly, the

20 City responded to Plaintiff’s March 5, 2020 email that same day; and stayed in very close touch over

21 the following week to explain that counsel for the City was ill and only working part time, that the

22 City had declared an emergency related to the coronavirus pandemic, and that accordingly counsel for

24
2
25 It is doubly unfounded to claim that the City was nonresponsive because, in addition to
communicating about the City’s responses to Plaintiff’s discovery requests, the parties were frequently
26 communicating about other issues, including Plaintiff’s request for an extension on her responses to
the City’s discovery requests, propounded on October 10, 2019. February email chain between Erin
27 Kuka to Deborah Kochan, Kuka Decl. Ex. 8. The City agreed to extend Plaintiff’s response deadline to
March 13, 2020. The City has received responses but no verifications, to date of this filing.
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1 the City was diverted from her normal practice. March 4 email from Erin Kuka to Deborah Kochan,

2 Kuka Decl. Ex. 4; March email chain between Erin Kuka and Deborah Kochan, Kuka Decl. Ex. 5.

3 Contrary to Plaintiff’s representation to the court, Plaintiff’s April 6, 2020 email did not go

4 unanswered; rather, the City responded less than an hour later with a 5-page, detailed response to

5 Plaintiff’s meet and confer email. April 6, 2020 Letter from Erin Kuka to Deborah Kochan, Ex. F.

6 Contrary to Plaintiff’s representation to the court, the City’s letter neither “failed to

7 substantively address Plaintiff’s concerns,” nor “refused to amend its responses.” Plaintiff’s MPA at

8 3. Rather, the City’s April 6th letter identifies multiple areas where the City offered to amend its

9 responses. April 6, 2020 Letter from Erin Kuka to Deborah Kochan, Ex. F, at p. 4. The April 6th

10 letter also articulates the City’s substantive position to the issues raised in Plaintiff’s email, as best as

11 the City could given the lack of detail in Plaintiff’s meet and confer email. With regard to Plaintiff’s

12 claim that the City had improperly interposed objections in its response to Plaintiff’s RFP, the City

13 wrote:

14 Your allegation of “boilerplate objections” is not well founded. While the City
interposed objections, as is its right, the objections were not asserted in a
15 boilerplate fashion. If you identify which objections you believe to be
improper, then I will review and we can meet and confer to address your
16 concerns.

17 Id. at 1. The City repeated this request with regard to Plaintiff’s claim that the City had interposed

18 “boilerplate, improper objections” in its responses to the Plaintiff’s Form Interrogatories. Id. at 3.

19 Contrary to Plaintiff’s representation to the court, the City did not “fail[] to respond for over

20 a month” or “refuse[] to provide proper responses” following Plaintiff’s April 14, 2020 email.

21 Plaintiff’s MPA at 3. Rather, when Plaintiff followed up on May 6, 2020, the City responded a couple

22 of hours later to explain that it had missed the April 14th email, and that it would prioritize

23 responding. May 6 email from Erin Kuka to Deborah Kochan, Kuka Decl. Ex. 6. The City responded

24 with a substantive meet and confer letter three business days later, on May 11. May 11, 2020 Letter

25 from Erin Kuka to Deborah Kochan, Ex. I. In the letter, the City agreed to supplement its responses in

26 a few additional ways to address some of Plaintiff’s concerns, explained again that it would not agree

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1 to a stipulation waiving its objections, and invited Plaintiff to further meet and confer regarding any

2 specific “vague and ambiguous” objections with which she takes issue. Id. at 1.

3 Plaintiff never identified the objections she believes to be improper, and instead filed this

4 motion.

5 III. THE COURT SHOULD DENY PLAINTIFF’S MOTION.
6 A. The Court Should Deny Plaintiff’s Request to Strike the City’s Objections.

7 In her Motion, Plaintiff articulates her requested relief as “with the exception of the attorney

8 client privilege and attorney work product doctrine, this Court [should] strike both the boilerplate and

9 specific objections interposed with respect to Plaintiff’s First Set of Requests for Production of

10 Documents, Requests for Admission, and First Set of Form Interrogatories – Employment.” Plaintiff’s

11 MPA at 10. This is an astonishing request, and the court should deny it.

12 Preliminarily, the phrasing of the requested relief lays bare how inadequate Plaintiff’s meet and

13 confer efforts have been. Apparently, Plaintiff’s position is that each and every objection interposed

14 by the City is improper… with the exception of attorney client privilege or attorney work product

15 doctrine. The City learned of this position when it read Plaintiff’s moving papers. Additionally,

16 though Plaintiff now seeks to strike “both the boilerplate and specific objections,” Plaintiff’s position

17 during meet and confer was that she challenged only (unspecified) “boilerplate” objections and

18 (unspecified) objections articulating vague and ambiguous terms.

19 The Court should deny Plaintiff’s extraordinary request for relief for two reasons: first, because

20 Plaintiff did not adequately meet and confer; and second, because Plaintiff’s SSUF does not comply

21 with the California Rules of Court.

22 The Discovery Act requires parties to meet and confer to resolve discovery disputes before

23 seeking intervention of the court, and sanctions are an appropriate remedy when the moving party has

24 failed to meet and confer. In Obregon v. Superior Court, the Court of Appeal affirmed the Superior

25 Court’s finding that a plaintiff had not sufficiently met and conferred, and held that sanctions are

26 permitted where a party does not make adequate efforts at informal resolution during the mandatory

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1 meet and confer process. Obregon v. Superior Court, 67 Cal.App.4th 424 (1998). 3 There, a plaintiff

2 in an employment case sent a meet and confer letter to the employer requesting further responses,

3 claiming the employer has “provided incomplete or evasive responses and/or meritless objections,”

4 identifying those objections, and asserting that the employer must provide “full and complete

5 responses.” Id. at 428, 429, 428-29. The employer responded by “reviewing [the employer’s]

6 positions on the interrogatories identified in the plaintiff’s letter” and “asserting essentially the same

7 objections as [it] had asserted in response to the original interrogatories.” Id. at 429, 428. The

8 plaintiff then filed her motion to compel, and the employer opposed on the ground that Plaintiff had

9 not made a good faith effort at informal resolution. Id. The Superior Court agreed with the employer

10 and imposed sanctions. Id. The plaintiff filed a writ petition. On resolution of the writ petition, the

11 Court of Appeal reiterated that the Discovery Act requires a good faith attempt to resolve discovery

12 disputes informally. Id. The Court further held that the Superior Court permissibly found the

13 plaintiff’s meet and confer efforts inadequate, and that sanctions were an appropriate remedy. Id. at

14 428-29, 434.

15 Of course, the Obregon case is distinguishable from the case at bar in that the plaintiff in

16 Obregon articulated which objections she was challenging during meet and confer. Id. at 429. Here,

17 the City learned of Plaintiff’s extreme position in her moving papers, despite the City’s multiple

18 requests since February for Plaintiff to specify which objections Plaintiff believed to be improper.

19 This clearly does not satisfy the Discovery Act’s requirement to meet and confer in good faith. Even

20 if the court were willing to credit Plaintiff with meeting and conferring due to Plaintiff’s invoking

21 “boilerplate objections,”—which it should not do—that certainly does not entitle Plaintiff to now seek

22 to have the City’s specific objections struck. In trying to convince the City to sign its stipulation

23 waiving the City’s objections, Plaintiff stated that the stipulation “obviates the need for a line-by-line

24 discussion about the propriety of the many objections.” April 14, 2020 email from Deb Kochan to

25 Erin Kuka (Kochan Decl. Ex. G). Plaintiff knew what the Discovery Act requires of her; she simply

26 chose not to do it.

27
3
For convenience, the Obregon case is appended as Exhibit 10 to the Kuka Decl.
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1 Finally, even if Plaintiff had adequately met and conferred regarding the City’s objections, she

2 has not shown her entitlement to have the objections struck. Plaintiff’s SSUF regarding the City’s

3 Request for Production does not mention the objections, much less articulate an argument as to why

4 any of them should be struck. The SSUFs for Plaintiff’s Request for Admissions and Form

5 Interrogatories contain only an unsupported claim that some objections should be struck, in most

6 instances without identifying which ones, and in no instances explaining why they should be struck.

7 This is a clear violation of California Rules of Court, which requires that the separate statement for a

8 discovery motion “provide[] all the information necessary to understand each discovery request and all

9 the responses to it that are at issue,” including “A statement of the factual and legal reasons for

10 compelling further responses, answers, or production as to each matter in dispute.” California Rule of

11 Court 3.1345(c), (c)(3). Plaintiff’s SSUFs do not comply with this requirement. Failure to comply

12 with Court rule 3.1345 is a valid basis to deny a motion to compel. Mills v. U.S. Bank, 166

13 Cal.App.4th 871, 892 (2008) (citations omitted). 4

14 Accordingly, for both of these independently-adequate reasons, Plaintiff’s request to strike all

15 of the City’s objections should be denied.

16 B. The Court Should Deny Plaintiff’s Request to Order Supplemental Responses.

17 Plaintiff’s request for supplemental responses is unfounded and should be denied. First, the

18 parties have resolved many of Plaintiff’s issues during meet and confer, and accordingly, it is improper

19 for Plaintiff to move for relief of supplemental responses because the requested relief is identical to the

20 relief that the parties have already agreed to. Second, for the remaining items, the court should deny

21 Plaintiff’s motion for the reasons articulated below.

22 Plaintiff’s request for supplemental responses to her Request for Production of Documents

23 (“RFP”) 2-5 should be denied because Plaintiff’s requests are overbroad, and the City has already

24 produced all discoverable documents. Plaintiff concedes the overbreadth of her requests when she

25 writes, for example related to RFP 2, that she alleges her supervisors treated her differently in “nearly

26 all” “work related” matters; Plaintiff does not claim that they treated her differently in every matter,

27
4
For convenience, the Mills case is appended as Exhibit 11 to the Kuka Decl.
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1 and accordingly a request for communications “related to” every matter is overbroad. Of course,

2 Plaintiff knows in which ways she believes she was treated differently, and could have articulated

3 particularized requests. Instead, Plaintiff chose to propound overbroad requests. The City would have

4 been within its rights to simply object that the requests are overbroad and sit on its hands. Instead, the

5 City, in good faith, proactively identified particularized categories of documents that are likely to be

6 germane to the case, and produced all documents falling into those categories. The categories are

7 expansive: the City produced all documents related to Plaintiff’s work performance; Plaintiff's training

8 and requests for training; communication between Plaintiff and her supervisors of a personal nature;

9 non-confidential and non-private communications regarding work tasks and assignments;

10 communications related to Plaintiff's work schedule and payroll; communications related to Plaintiff's

11 alleged workplace injury; and communications responsive to Request Nos. 13-18 [related to Plaintiff’s

12 health/alleged requests for accommodation/interactive process]. As the City has told Plaintiff multiple

13 times, the City produced all documents falling into to those categories. The City has offered multiple

14 times to search for additional discoverable documents, should Plaintiff merely articulate an

15 appropriately-particularized request. April 6, 2020 letter from Erin Kuka to Deborah Kochan, attached

16 as Exhibit F to the Kochan Decl. ISO Plaintiff’s Motion, pp. 1-2; May 11, 2020 letter from Erin Kuka

17 to Deborah Kochan, attached as Exhibit I to the Kochan Decl. ISO Plaintiff’s Motion, pp. 1-2.

18 Plaintiff demonstrates such a request here, for the first time in her SSUF in support of a motion to

19 compel, articulating “expressions of their view of Ms. Herrera” as a category of documents Plaintiff

20 seeks. As the City has offered multiple times, the City can and will search for this appropriate request.

21 Plaintiff’s request for supplemental responses to Plaintiff’s RFP 8-10 should likewise be

22 denied. These Requests are overbroad, include several subparts that are very lengthy, and deploy

23 confusing, redundant and vague terms. The City so objected. But, in a good faith effort to still

24 provide Plaintiff with all relevant/discoverable documents, the City proactively produced responsive

25 documents along with its response, and listed exactly which documents and categories it produced for

26 each request. The documents the City produced are expansive: Plaintiff's Performance Plan and

27 Appraisal Reports, and correspondence and memoranda detailing Plaintiff’s performance for the

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1 relevant time period. Given the vague terms of the requests, the City did its best to articulate and

2 identify responsive documents in good faith, and the City produced all of the documents it identified

3 as responsive. The City invited Plaintiff to articulate any types of documents it believes the City

4 omitted, but Plaintiff has never articulated any document or type of document that is responsive to

5 Plaintiff’s requests and is not already produced.

6 Plaintiff’s request for supplemental responses to Plaintiff’s RFP 13-18 should likewise be

7 denied. These are broad requests, made all the more difficult because Plaintiff propounded these

8 discovery requests at the earliest possible moment, and, at the time of the City’s response, it did not

9 have full information regarding the scope of Plaintiff’s claimed disabilities. The City, working with its

10 understanding of Plaintiff’s claims from her complaint and in good faith, proactively produced a broad

11 swath of documents (likely over-inclusive), and provided Plaintiff with the following list of

12 documents:

13 documents related to Plaintiff's requests for ergonomic/adjustable office
equipment, leaves of absence, extensions of leaves of absence, flexible
14 scheduling, schedule adjustments, assignment and placement requests, time off
for medical appointments, time off for unspecified appointments, reasonable
15 accommodation paperwork, return to work paperwork, medical separation
documents, leave request forms, requests to work from home, Plaintiffs
16 absences from work, and essential functions of Plaintiff's positions.

17 As it has articulated several times, the City produced all documents falling into those categories. The

18 City invited Plaintiff to articulate any types of documents it believes the City omitted, but Plaintiff has

19 never articulated any document or type of document that is not already produced.

20 Plaintiff’s request for supplemental responses to Plaintiff’s Form Interrogatories –

21 Employment should also be denied. Preliminarily, to the extent that Plaintiff seeks supplemental

22 responses to include “verbal ‘communications,’” and information about investigations conducted by

23 the City but not the City Attorney’s Office, the City has already agreed to investigate and supplement,

24 so these issues are not an appropriate basis for a motion to compel. Beyond that, supplemental

25 responses are not warranted because the City properly invoked California Code of Civil Procedure

26 Section 2030.230. On December 30, 2019, the City provided Plaintiff with all documents

27 memorializing the information sought in the interrogatory, along with its written discovery responses.

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1 The City does not have a written compilation of these communications. The burden of summarizing

2 these communications would be the same for Plaintiff as for the City. Per the case Plaintiff cites,

3 Deyo v. Kilbourne, a discovery response invoking Section 2030.230 is sufficient if it specifies the

4 records from which a response may be ascertained and provides the requesting party reasonable

5 opportunity to inspect the records. Deyo v. Kilbourne, 84 Cal.App.3d 771, 784 (1978). 5 The City’s

6 response satisfies both of these requirements. The City asked Plaintiff to articulate her argument as to

7 why this was improper in both meet and confer letters, and received only conclusory responses. See

8 April 14, 2020 email from Deborah Kochan to Erin Kuka (Exhibit G to Kochan Decl.). (“This

9 circumstance obviously does not apply here.”) Plaintiff’s request for supplemental responses on this

10 basis is unsupported and should be denied.

11 C. The Court Should Deny Plaintiff’s Request to Impose Sanctions Against the City.

12 Plaintiff’s request that the City be sanctioned is unsupported by the record. Rather, the City’s

13 discovery responses and the documentation of the parties’ meet and confer readily establishes that the

14 City acted in good faith and went out of its way to provide Plaintiff with documents, despite Plaintiff’s

15 overbroad, vague, and confusing requests. Plaintiff argues that the City should be sanctioned for

16 interposing general objections, which the parties resolved during meet and confer, and for interposing

17 “unmeritorious objections.” Despite the City’s continual requests since February, Plaintiff never

18 identified which objections it disputes until she filed this motion, and she certainly hasn’t proven that

19 any of the City’s objections were “unmeritorious.” Plaintiff also argues that the court should sanction

20 the City for not agreeing to sign the stipulation she drafted. It should go without saying that it would

21 be improper for the court to sanction the City for not agreeing to execute a private stipulation that

22 would waive the City’s properly-interposed objections. The record show that the City was the

23 opposite of obstructionist in its discovery responses, but rather that the City continually worked in

24 good faith to provide Plaintiff with responses and documents, and to resolve the Plaintiff’s concerns in

25 meet and confer. Accordingly, the court should deny Plaintiff’s request for sanctions.

27
5
For convenience, the Deyo case is appended as Exhibit 12 to the Kuka Decl.
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IV. DUE TO PLAINTIFF’S ABUSE OF DISCOVERY, THE COURT SHOULD AWARD
1 THE CITY SANCTIONS FOR COUNSEL’S TIME IN OPPOSING THIS MOTION.
2 The City seeks sanctions against Plaintiff for the City’s time in opposing this motion. The

3 majority of the issues Plaintiff cites in her motion are either already resolved during meet and confer

4 or were never raised during meet and confer, and Plaintiff’s motion is inappropriate as it relates to

5 those issues. Obregon v. Superior Court, 67 Cal.App.4th at 424. Additionally, as briefed in Section

6 II, supra, Plaintiff made several important misrepresentations to the court about the parties’ meet and

7 confer efforts. It is clear from the record that Plaintiff has used this motion not as a “tool[] to facilitate

8 litigation,” but rather as a “weapon[] to wage litigation.” Calcor Space Facility, Inc. v. Superior

9 Court, 53 Cal.App.4th at 221. It is equally clear from the record that the City has gone above and

10 beyond in responding to Plaintiff’s discovery requests and meet and confer letters, producing nearly

11 5,000 pages of discovery immediately with written responses, providing transparent and clear written

12 responses in an effort to work collaboratively to further this case, and engaging in meet and confer in

13 good faith. As shown in the Kuka Declaration, the City has incurred more than $4,800 in attorney’s

14 fees to date to oppose Plaintiff’s ill-taken motion. Kuka Dec. ¶14. The City respectfully requests an

15 award of sanctions up to that amount.

17 Dated: June 17, 2020 DENNIS J. HERRERA
City Attorney
18 KATHARINE HOBIN PORTER
Chief Labor Attorney
19 ERIN KUKA
Deputy City Attorney
20

21
By: /s/ Erin Kuka
22 ERIN KUKA

23 Attorneys for Defendant
CITY AND COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO
24

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CASE NO. CGC-19-578026

Case Info

Judge

Samuel K. Feng Track Judge’s New Case

Case No.

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Document Filed Date

June 17, 2020

Case Filing Date

July 30, 2019

County

Parties

CITY AND COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO Defendant
DOES 1 THROUGH 15 Defendant
FRENZEN, AMY P. Attorney for the Defendant
HERRERA, MARGARITA Plaintiff
KOCHAN, DEBORAH MARIE Attorney for the Plaintiff
KUKA, ERIN Attorney for the Defendant
ROLNICK, JONATHAN C Attorney for the Defendant
YAN, MATTHEW Attorney for the Defendant
Mathew Stephenson Attorneys for Plaintiffs
Dennis Herrera Attorneys for Defendants
Katharine Porter Attorneys for Defendants
David Chiu Attorneys for Defendants

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Party Discovery: MARGARITA HERRERA VS. CITY AND COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO ET AL

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