Preview
Sean R. Laird (SBN 214916)
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The Law Firm of Sean R. Laird 11/20/2020
2 805 16th Street
Sacramento, CA 95814
3 (916) 441-1636
4 (916) 760-9002
seanlairdlaw@gmail.com
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6 Attorneys for Plaintiffs
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8 SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF BUTTE
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PATSY NEWTON, individually; HAROLD Case No. 20CV01091
11 NEWTON; individually; SUZANNE BOLEN,
individually. PLAINTIFF’S OPPOSITION TO
12 DEFENDANT ENLOE MEDICAL
Plaintiffs, CENTER’S MOTION TO COMPEL
13 RESPONSES TO FORM
14 vs. INTERROGATORIES - SET TWO.
15 ENLOE MEDICAL CENTER; and DOES 1 -
16 50, inclusive, DATE: November 25, 2020
TIME: 9:00 a.m.
17 Defendants, DEPT: 1
18 Hon. Tamara L. Mosbarger
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Complaint Filed: 5/29/2020
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Trial Date: 12/14/2020
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PLAINTIFF’S OPPOSITION TO DEFENDANT ENLOE MEDICAL CENTER’S MOTION TO COMPEL RESPONSES TO
FORM INTERROGATORIES - SET TWO.
1 I. INTRODUCTION
2 Before the Court is defendant’s hastily filed motion to compel responses to its Form
3 Interrogatories - Set Two. Before plaintiff could even respond to defendant’s meet and confer
4 correspondence or serve amended responses to this group of discovery (some of which would very
5 likely had obviated the need for this motion) defendant noticed an ex-parte application for an order
6 shortening time to have this motion heard. See Declaration of Sean R. Laird in Opposition to
7 Defendant’s Motion to Compel, (hereinafter “Laird Decl.”) ¶2. Plaintiff will continue to make an
8 effort to meet and confer in an attempt to narrow the scope of the discovery dispute for the Court.
9 Id. However, defendant’s own lack of diligence in serving discovery, timely meeting and
10 conferring, and timely bringing a motion to compel before the discovery cut-off is apparently what
11 led them to abandon any meaningful meet and confer efforts (upon their previously designated
12 timeline) and file three motions on shortened time only to claim it is plaintiff who has caused this
13 unnecessary logjam. This is false, a misrepresentation of the facts, and lacks candor to this Court.
14 The complaint in this matter was filed May 29, 2020. See Laird Decl. ¶3. Defendants were
15 served June 12, 2020. Id. Defendants have had the very document upon which they base their
16 Requests for Admissions and Form Interrogatories since that date. Id. Moreover, the Court held the
17 hearing setting preference in this matter on August 12, 2020 and signed the order granting
18 preference on August 21, 2020. Id. Defendants waited until September 22, 2020 to serve the
19 Requests for Admissions and Form Interrogatories upon which this motion is based. Plaintiff’s
20 served objections to these requests on October 26, 2020. Id. The last day to set a timely motion to
21 compel was November 3, 2020. Id.
22 On November 9, 2020, instead of timely meeting and conferring, defendants waited until
23 4:23 p.m. to send a 60-page meet and confer letter demanding a response from plaintiff before
24 close of business 3-days later (November 13, 2020), a date where 4 depositions had been set
25 between 11:00 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. See Laird Decl. ¶4 and Defendant’s Exhibit C. Nevertheless,
26 despite defense counsel’s unreasonable timeline, plaintiff endeavored to begin responding to the
27 60-page correspondence in 3 days and had made substantial progress. Id. At 9:58 a.m. on Friday,
28 November 13, 2020, before the time to reply on the already unreasonable timeline had lapsed,
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PLAINTIFF’S OPPOSITION TO DEFENDANT ENLOE MEDICAL CENTER’S MOTION TO COMPEL RESPONSES TO
FORM INTERROGATORIES - SET TWO.
1 plaintiff’s counsel received notice from yet another attorney representing defendant indicating that
2 they would be appearing ex-parte on Monday, November 16, 2020 to request an order shortening
3 time for these motions. See Laird Decl. ¶4 and Exhibit 1. At the depositions later that morning,
4 plaintiff’s counsel confirmed with the attorney who authored the November 9, 2020 meet and
5 confer correspondence that they had disregarded their own timeline for plaintiff’s counsel to even
6 respond. Ian Scharg, counsel for defendants indicated he realized the predicament, but that they
7 did not “want to blow any deadlines” with the discovery cut-off approaching that Monday. I
8 confirmed with Mr. Scharg that since they had filed their application before giving me a chance to
9 respond, that they no longer required a response from me “by 5:00 p.m. on Friday, November 13,
10 2020” as indicated in their original November 9th correspondence. See Laird Decl. ¶4 and Exhibit
11 2.
12 With this as a background, defendant now comes before this Court, without giving proper
13 notice, asking for $785 dollars in stations for preparing and filing a motion before even giving
14 plaintiff’s counsel an opportunity to respond on their own unilaterally selected timeline. It is
15 frankly outrageous.
16 The interrogatories that defendant claims are so straightforward and simple are, in fact,
17 predicated on poorly worded RFA’s, almost every single one of which lacks any date or timeframe,
18 which in this particular case makes them almost impossible to answer. Had defendants waited for
19 plaintiff’s meet and confer efforts they would have seen that agreements to modify or relate the
20 requests to specific time frames could possibly have cured their defective requests or that plaintiff
21 was agreeable to serving amended responses based upon their meet and confer efforts. Instead,
22 defendant’s apparently did not want to “blow their deadline,” so they disregarded their own
23 timeline, spent hours writing a motion and filing it before even engaging in actual, good faith meet
24 and confer efforts, and now blame plaintiff’s counsel for this undertaking. To put it mildly, this
25 lacks merit.
II. ARGUMENT
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27 A. Plaintiff Served Timely, Well Founded Objections To Poorly Worded Requests For
Admissions Which Were Overbroad and Vague, With Are Predicates to These
28 Interrogatories.
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PLAINTIFF’S OPPOSITION TO DEFENDANT ENLOE MEDICAL CENTER’S MOTION TO COMPEL RESPONSES TO
FORM INTERROGATORIES - SET TWO.
1 The Interrogatories at issue require Plaintiff first to respond to Requests for Admissions.
2 Given plaintiff’s failings in drafting specific, time related RFA’s plaintiff was unable to answer and
3 instead served timely objections to each. The poor drafting of the RFA’s correspondingly preclude
4 plaintiff from answering the 17.1 form interrogatories, which are predicated on plaintiff being able
5 to answer the RFA’s. Defendants did not meet and confer in good faith within their own timeline
6 and allow clarification or further responses served to the RFA’s. Instead, their lack of diligence
7 created a boatload of necessary work for the Court and counsel. Plaintiff’s counsel is willing to
8 provide responsive answers to Form Interrogatory 17.1, subject to the privilege objections and
9 premature expert opinion objections, for those RFA’s the Court orders or which counsel can agree
10 upon.
11 However, the facts are crucial in understanding the inadequate nature of the defects in
12 defendants requests. As a background, Ms. Newton was admitted to Enloe Medical Center on
13 September 11, 2019. See Laird Decl. ¶5. She remained at the hospital until September 21, 2019,
14 when she was transferred to Cal Park Rehabilitation Center, a skilled nursing facility. Ms. Newton,
15 however, was then transferred back to Enloe Medical Center on October 8, 2019 where she
16 remained until October 17, 2019. Moreover, Ms. Newton then had multiple encounters with the
17 defendant hospital following her October 17, 2019 discharge, including until recently in 2020.
18 Moreover, there have been depositions of staff and doctors at the Enloe Medical Center wound
19 clinic and other discovery related to these encounters. With this as a background, defendants
20 served requests for admissions that related to no particular date, time, or hospital admission that
21 would have permitted plaintiff to adequately understand what they were asking to plaintiff to
22 admit. Simply arguing now that “this matter clearly relates to a single hospital stay,” does not
23 accurately portray the full picture of this case and it certainly does not cure the defect in the
24 original request for admission that wholly lacked any timeframe whatsoever. Instead defendant
25 now comes before this Court and asks the Court to re-read and re-write its requests for admissions
26 to make them discernible, clear as to time, and relevant to the actual allegations in the complaint.
27 The balance of the requests for admissions, which are predicates to these form
28 interrogatories, all suffer from the same defects as noted above and as addressed in plaintiff’s
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PLAINTIFF’S OPPOSITION TO DEFENDANT ENLOE MEDICAL CENTER’S MOTION TO COMPEL RESPONSES TO
FORM INTERROGATORIES - SET TWO.
1 separate statement in that motion, where there is absolutely no reference to time, admission, or
2 hospital stay and the like. Defendant would like plaintiff to divine this and have the Court re-write
3 a date into each RFA, but the Court should refuse to do so. In addition many of the “contention”
4 requests are not related to the contentions actually made in the complaint, such that defendant’s
5 misstate facts. Instead of using the facts as alleged in the complaint, defendant changes the various
6 states of mind, changes the allegations and then demands that plaintiff admit or deny the request
7 based upon a newfound set of allegations that do not exist in the case. Often times, the defendants
8 do this while adding multiple, compound layers to the their request instead of one, specific
9 contention or allegation. This violates CCP §2033.060(f), which is in place to prevent the use of
10 compound admissions so as to require more information than could be obtained by 35 separate
11 questions, which is exactly what defendant attempts to do here.
12 Moreover, defendant repeatedly indicates that plaintiff is required to make a reasonable
13 inquiry in order to be able to respond to the RFA’s. This “reasonable inquiry” does not mean
14 counsel has to reasonably inquire with the defendants to understand and clarify their requests so
15 that we can comprehend what is being asked, about which admission, related to which wound, or
16 which state of mind. Lastly, at the time the RFA’s were being drafted and responded to, the expert
17 disclosure had not taken place.
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B. Defendant’s Request For Monetary Sanctions Should Be Denied Because Defendant
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Failed To Comply With Code Of Civil Procedure Section 2023.040.
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First, it is unclear whether Defendant is requesting sanctions, but Plaintiff address the
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subject here because of the absolute absurdity of the implied request given counsel declared her
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23 hourly rate and time spent on the motion - all of which could have been avoided had Defendant
24 proceeded timely according to the discovery rules and adhered to its own unilaterally set deadline
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for accepting response. Defendant’s request for sanctions should be denied for two reasons. First,
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defendant has not complied with Code of Civil Procedure section 2023.040. That section provides,
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28 “A request for a sanction shall in the notice of motion, identify every person, party, and attorney
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PLAINTIFF’S OPPOSITION TO DEFENDANT ENLOE MEDICAL CENTER’S MOTION TO COMPEL RESPONSES TO
FORM INTERROGATORIES - SET TWO.
against whom the sanction is sought and specify the type of sanction sought.” (Emphasis
1
2 supplied.) Defendant’s notice of motion does not contain the word “sanction” let alone identify
3 every person, party and attorney against whom the sanction is sought or specify the type of
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sanction sought. Second, plaintiff intended to and intends to address defendant’s concerns raised
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in its meet and confer letter regarding the objections stated in the responses to requests for
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7 admissions by serving further responses for those where the parties can agree and consequently
8 serving amended corresponding form interrogatory responses. Defendant’s request for sanctions
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should be denied.
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11 III. CONCLUSION
12 For all of the foregoing reasons, plaintiff respectfully requests the Court deny defendant’s
13 motion.
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Friday, November 20, 2020 The Law Firm of Sean R. Laird
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__________________________
17 SEAN R. LAIRD,
18 Attorney for Plaintiffs
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PLAINTIFF’S OPPOSITION TO DEFENDANT ENLOE MEDICAL CENTER’S MOTION TO COMPEL RESPONSES TO
FORM INTERROGATORIES - SET TWO.
Preview
Sean R. Laird (SBN 214916) 1 The Law Firm of Sean R. Laird 11/20/2020 2 805 16th Street Sacramento, CA 95814 3 (916) 441-1636 4 (916) 760-9002 seanlairdlaw@gmail.com 5 6 Attorneys for Plaintiffs 7 8 SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF BUTTE 9 10 PATSY NEWTON, individually; HAROLD Case No. 20CV01091 11 NEWTON; individually; SUZANNE BOLEN, individually. PLAINTIFF’S OPPOSITION TO 12 DEFENDANT ENLOE MEDICAL Plaintiffs, CENTER’S MOTION TO COMPEL 13 RESPONSES TO FORM 14 vs. INTERROGATORIES - SET TWO. 15 ENLOE MEDICAL CENTER; and DOES 1 - 16 50, inclusive, DATE: November 25, 2020 TIME: 9:00 a.m. 17 Defendants, DEPT: 1 18 Hon. Tamara L. Mosbarger 19 20 Complaint Filed: 5/29/2020 21 Trial Date: 12/14/2020 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 - 1! - PLAINTIFF’S OPPOSITION TO DEFENDANT ENLOE MEDICAL CENTER’S MOTION TO COMPEL RESPONSES TO FORM INTERROGATORIES - SET TWO. 1 I. INTRODUCTION 2 Before the Court is defendant’s hastily filed motion to compel responses to its Form 3 Interrogatories - Set Two. Before plaintiff could even respond to defendant’s meet and confer 4 correspondence or serve amended responses to this group of discovery (some of which would very 5 likely had obviated the need for this motion) defendant noticed an ex-parte application for an order 6 shortening time to have this motion heard. See Declaration of Sean R. Laird in Opposition to 7 Defendant’s Motion to Compel, (hereinafter “Laird Decl.”) ¶2. Plaintiff will continue to make an 8 effort to meet and confer in an attempt to narrow the scope of the discovery dispute for the Court. 9 Id. However, defendant’s own lack of diligence in serving discovery, timely meeting and 10 conferring, and timely bringing a motion to compel before the discovery cut-off is apparently what 11 led them to abandon any meaningful meet and confer efforts (upon their previously designated 12 timeline) and file three motions on shortened time only to claim it is plaintiff who has caused this 13 unnecessary logjam. This is false, a misrepresentation of the facts, and lacks candor to this Court. 14 The complaint in this matter was filed May 29, 2020. See Laird Decl. ¶3. Defendants were 15 served June 12, 2020. Id. Defendants have had the very document upon which they base their 16 Requests for Admissions and Form Interrogatories since that date. Id. Moreover, the Court held the 17 hearing setting preference in this matter on August 12, 2020 and signed the order granting 18 preference on August 21, 2020. Id. Defendants waited until September 22, 2020 to serve the 19 Requests for Admissions and Form Interrogatories upon which this motion is based. Plaintiff’s 20 served objections to these requests on October 26, 2020. Id. The last day to set a timely motion to 21 compel was November 3, 2020. Id. 22 On November 9, 2020, instead of timely meeting and conferring, defendants waited until 23 4:23 p.m. to send a 60-page meet and confer letter demanding a response from plaintiff before 24 close of business 3-days later (November 13, 2020), a date where 4 depositions had been set 25 between 11:00 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. See Laird Decl. ¶4 and Defendant’s Exhibit C. Nevertheless, 26 despite defense counsel’s unreasonable timeline, plaintiff endeavored to begin responding to the 27 60-page correspondence in 3 days and had made substantial progress. Id. At 9:58 a.m. on Friday, 28 November 13, 2020, before the time to reply on the already unreasonable timeline had lapsed, - 2! - PLAINTIFF’S OPPOSITION TO DEFENDANT ENLOE MEDICAL CENTER’S MOTION TO COMPEL RESPONSES TO FORM INTERROGATORIES - SET TWO. 1 plaintiff’s counsel received notice from yet another attorney representing defendant indicating that 2 they would be appearing ex-parte on Monday, November 16, 2020 to request an order shortening 3 time for these motions. See Laird Decl. ¶4 and Exhibit 1. At the depositions later that morning, 4 plaintiff’s counsel confirmed with the attorney who authored the November 9, 2020 meet and 5 confer correspondence that they had disregarded their own timeline for plaintiff’s counsel to even 6 respond. Ian Scharg, counsel for defendants indicated he realized the predicament, but that they 7 did not “want to blow any deadlines” with the discovery cut-off approaching that Monday. I 8 confirmed with Mr. Scharg that since they had filed their application before giving me a chance to 9 respond, that they no longer required a response from me “by 5:00 p.m. on Friday, November 13, 10 2020” as indicated in their original November 9th correspondence. See Laird Decl. ¶4 and Exhibit 11 2. 12 With this as a background, defendant now comes before this Court, without giving proper 13 notice, asking for $785 dollars in stations for preparing and filing a motion before even giving 14 plaintiff’s counsel an opportunity to respond on their own unilaterally selected timeline. It is 15 frankly outrageous. 16 The interrogatories that defendant claims are so straightforward and simple are, in fact, 17 predicated on poorly worded RFA’s, almost every single one of which lacks any date or timeframe, 18 which in this particular case makes them almost impossible to answer. Had defendants waited for 19 plaintiff’s meet and confer efforts they would have seen that agreements to modify or relate the 20 requests to specific time frames could possibly have cured their defective requests or that plaintiff 21 was agreeable to serving amended responses based upon their meet and confer efforts. Instead, 22 defendant’s apparently did not want to “blow their deadline,” so they disregarded their own 23 timeline, spent hours writing a motion and filing it before even engaging in actual, good faith meet 24 and confer efforts, and now blame plaintiff’s counsel for this undertaking. To put it mildly, this 25 lacks merit. II. ARGUMENT 26 27 A. Plaintiff Served Timely, Well Founded Objections To Poorly Worded Requests For Admissions Which Were Overbroad and Vague, With Are Predicates to These 28 Interrogatories. - 3! - PLAINTIFF’S OPPOSITION TO DEFENDANT ENLOE MEDICAL CENTER’S MOTION TO COMPEL RESPONSES TO FORM INTERROGATORIES - SET TWO. 1 The Interrogatories at issue require Plaintiff first to respond to Requests for Admissions. 2 Given plaintiff’s failings in drafting specific, time related RFA’s plaintiff was unable to answer and 3 instead served timely objections to each. The poor drafting of the RFA’s correspondingly preclude 4 plaintiff from answering the 17.1 form interrogatories, which are predicated on plaintiff being able 5 to answer the RFA’s. Defendants did not meet and confer in good faith within their own timeline 6 and allow clarification or further responses served to the RFA’s. Instead, their lack of diligence 7 created a boatload of necessary work for the Court and counsel. Plaintiff’s counsel is willing to 8 provide responsive answers to Form Interrogatory 17.1, subject to the privilege objections and 9 premature expert opinion objections, for those RFA’s the Court orders or which counsel can agree 10 upon. 11 However, the facts are crucial in understanding the inadequate nature of the defects in 12 defendants requests. As a background, Ms. Newton was admitted to Enloe Medical Center on 13 September 11, 2019. See Laird Decl. ¶5. She remained at the hospital until September 21, 2019, 14 when she was transferred to Cal Park Rehabilitation Center, a skilled nursing facility. Ms. Newton, 15 however, was then transferred back to Enloe Medical Center on October 8, 2019 where she 16 remained until October 17, 2019. Moreover, Ms. Newton then had multiple encounters with the 17 defendant hospital following her October 17, 2019 discharge, including until recently in 2020. 18 Moreover, there have been depositions of staff and doctors at the Enloe Medical Center wound 19 clinic and other discovery related to these encounters. With this as a background, defendants 20 served requests for admissions that related to no particular date, time, or hospital admission that 21 would have permitted plaintiff to adequately understand what they were asking to plaintiff to 22 admit. Simply arguing now that “this matter clearly relates to a single hospital stay,” does not 23 accurately portray the full picture of this case and it certainly does not cure the defect in the 24 original request for admission that wholly lacked any timeframe whatsoever. Instead defendant 25 now comes before this Court and asks the Court to re-read and re-write its requests for admissions 26 to make them discernible, clear as to time, and relevant to the actual allegations in the complaint. 27 The balance of the requests for admissions, which are predicates to these form 28 interrogatories, all suffer from the same defects as noted above and as addressed in plaintiff’s - 4! - PLAINTIFF’S OPPOSITION TO DEFENDANT ENLOE MEDICAL CENTER’S MOTION TO COMPEL RESPONSES TO FORM INTERROGATORIES - SET TWO. 1 separate statement in that motion, where there is absolutely no reference to time, admission, or 2 hospital stay and the like. Defendant would like plaintiff to divine this and have the Court re-write 3 a date into each RFA, but the Court should refuse to do so. In addition many of the “contention” 4 requests are not related to the contentions actually made in the complaint, such that defendant’s 5 misstate facts. Instead of using the facts as alleged in the complaint, defendant changes the various 6 states of mind, changes the allegations and then demands that plaintiff admit or deny the request 7 based upon a newfound set of allegations that do not exist in the case. Often times, the defendants 8 do this while adding multiple, compound layers to the their request instead of one, specific 9 contention or allegation. This violates CCP §2033.060(f), which is in place to prevent the use of 10 compound admissions so as to require more information than could be obtained by 35 separate 11 questions, which is exactly what defendant attempts to do here. 12 Moreover, defendant repeatedly indicates that plaintiff is required to make a reasonable 13 inquiry in order to be able to respond to the RFA’s. This “reasonable inquiry” does not mean 14 counsel has to reasonably inquire with the defendants to understand and clarify their requests so 15 that we can comprehend what is being asked, about which admission, related to which wound, or 16 which state of mind. Lastly, at the time the RFA’s were being drafted and responded to, the expert 17 disclosure had not taken place. 18 B. Defendant’s Request For Monetary Sanctions Should Be Denied Because Defendant 19 Failed To Comply With Code Of Civil Procedure Section 2023.040. 20 First, it is unclear whether Defendant is requesting sanctions, but Plaintiff address the 21 subject here because of the absolute absurdity of the implied request given counsel declared her 22 23 hourly rate and time spent on the motion - all of which could have been avoided had Defendant 24 proceeded timely according to the discovery rules and adhered to its own unilaterally set deadline 25 for accepting response. Defendant’s request for sanctions should be denied for two reasons. First, 26 defendant has not complied with Code of Civil Procedure section 2023.040. That section provides, 27 28 “A request for a sanction shall in the notice of motion, identify every person, party, and attorney - 5! - PLAINTIFF’S OPPOSITION TO DEFENDANT ENLOE MEDICAL CENTER’S MOTION TO COMPEL RESPONSES TO FORM INTERROGATORIES - SET TWO. against whom the sanction is sought and specify the type of sanction sought.” (Emphasis 1 2 supplied.) Defendant’s notice of motion does not contain the word “sanction” let alone identify 3 every person, party and attorney against whom the sanction is sought or specify the type of 4 sanction sought. Second, plaintiff intended to and intends to address defendant’s concerns raised 5 in its meet and confer letter regarding the objections stated in the responses to requests for 6 7 admissions by serving further responses for those where the parties can agree and consequently 8 serving amended corresponding form interrogatory responses. Defendant’s request for sanctions 9 should be denied. 10 11 III. CONCLUSION 12 For all of the foregoing reasons, plaintiff respectfully requests the Court deny defendant’s 13 motion. 14 Friday, November 20, 2020 The Law Firm of Sean R. Laird 15 16 __________________________ 17 SEAN R. LAIRD, 18 Attorney for Plaintiffs 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 - 6! - PLAINTIFF’S OPPOSITION TO DEFENDANT ENLOE MEDICAL CENTER’S MOTION TO COMPEL RESPONSES TO FORM INTERROGATORIES - SET TWO.