Preview
Sean R. Laird (SBN 214916) 11/20/2020
1
The Law Firm of Sean R. Laird
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 SEPARATE
12 STATEMENT IN OPPOSITION TO
Plaintiffs, DEFENDANT ENLOE MEDICAL
13 CENTER’S MOTION TO COMPEL
14 vs. RESPONSES TO REQUESTS
PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS -
15 SET TWO.
ENLOE MEDICAL CENTER; and DOES 1 -
16 50, inclusive,
17 Defendants, DATE: November 25, 2020
TIME: 9:00 a.m.
18 DEPT: 1
19 Hon. Tamara L. Mosbarger
20
21
22 Complaint Filed: 5/29/2020
Trial Date: 12/14/2020
23
24
25 PLAINTIFF PATSY NEWTON hereby submits PLAINTIFF’S SEPARATE
26 STATEMENT IN OPPOSITION TO DEFENDANT ENLOE MEDICAL CENTER’S
27 MOTION TO COMPEL RESPONSES TO REQUESTS FOR PRODUCTION OF
28 DOCUMENTS - SET TWO as follows:
- 1!
-
PLAINTIFF’S SEPARATE STATEMENT IN OPPOSITION TO DEFENDANT ENLOE MEDICAL CENTER’S MOTION TO
COMPEL RESPONSES TO REQUESTS FOR PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS - SET TWO.
REQUEST FOR PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS, SET TWO
1 REQUEST FOR PRODUCTION 31:
2
All documents referenced in your response to Form Interrogatories, Set Two.
3
PLAINTIFF'S RESPONSE TO REQUEST FOR PRODUCTION 31:
4
Plaintiffs object that it seeks disclosure of privileged information or documentation, including,
5 protected by the attorney-client privilege, the work product doctrine, or to the extent this requests
seeks information that is in Defendants' possession, custody, or control, or information that is
6 equally available to Defendants including documents in the control of its counsel or corporate
counsel. As plaintiff was unable to answer the interrogatories, there are no responsive documents.
7
REASON FOR FURTHER RESPONSE:
8 Plaintiff's objection to this request is without merit or too general. Plaintiff's objection that
9 she has no responsive documents as she was unable to answer defendant’s interrogatories is
10
inadequate, incomplete, or evasive. Plaintiff’s response fails to comply with California Code of
11
Civil Procedure §§ 2031.220 and 2031.230.
12
California Code of Civil Procedure section 2031.240(b)(2) requires responding party set
13
forth clearly the extent of, and the specific ground for, her objection.
14
Further, section 2031.240(c) dictates if an objection is based on a claim of privilege or a
15
claim that the information sought is protected work product, the response shall provide sufficient
16
factual information for other parties to evaluate the merits of that claim, including, if necessary, a
17
privilege log.
18
Defendant is entitled to discover information and documents with which to assess a
19
plaintiff's ability or inability to admit or deny certain material facts. Plaintiff has refused to provide
20
21 any answers to defendant’s request for admissions and instead provided only blanket objections
22 without any attempt to answer such requests. Because defendant is entitled to answers to its
23 request for admissions, defendant is entitled to answers to its form interrogatories and its request
24 for production.
25 Plaintiff’s response to defendant Enloe Medical Center’s request for production does not
26 comply with applicable procedural requirements; fails to respond to the
27 questions posed; and is replete with unmeritorious objections.
28
- 2!
-
PLAINTIFF’S SEPARATE STATEMENT IN OPPOSITION TO DEFENDANT ENLOE MEDICAL CENTER’S MOTION TO
COMPEL RESPONSES TO REQUESTS FOR PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS - SET TWO.
1 PLAINTIFF’S REASON TO DENY FURTHER RESPONSE:
2 Before the Court is defendant’s hastily filed motion to compel responses to its Request for
3 Production of Documents - Set Two. Before plaintiff could even respond to defendant’s meet and
4 confer correspondence or serve amended responses to this group of discovery (some of which
5 would very likely had obviated the need for this motion) defendant noticed an ex-parte application
6 for an order shortening time to have this motion heard. See Declaration of Sean R. Laird in
7 Opposition to Defendant’s Motion to Compel Defendant Enloe Medical Center’s Requests for
8 Admissions, (hereinafter “Laird Decl.”) ¶2, filed herewith. Plaintiff will continue to make an effort
9 to meet and confer in an attempt to narrow the scope of the discovery dispute for the Court. Id.
10 However, defendant’s own lack of diligence in serving discovery, timely meeting and conferring,
11 and timely bringing a motion to compel before the discovery cut-off is apparently what led them to
12 abandon any meaningful meet and confer efforts (upon their previously designated timeline) and
13 file three motions on shortened time only to claim it is plaintiff who has caused this unnecessary
14 logjam. This is false, a misrepresentation of the facts, and lacks candor to this Court.
15 The complaint in this matter was filed May 29, 2020. See Laird Decl. ¶3. Defendants were
16 served June 12, 2020. Id. Defendants have had the very document upon which they base their
17 Requests for Admissions and Form Interrogatories since that date. Id. Moreover, the Court held the
18 hearing setting preference in this matter on August 12, 2020 and signed the order granting
19 preference on August 21, 2020. Id. Defendants waited until September 22, 2020 to serve the
20 Requests for Admissions and Form Interrogatories upon which this motion is based. Plaintiff’s
21 served objections to these requests on October 26, 2020. Id. The last day to set a timely motion to
22 compel was November 3, 2020. Id.
23 On November 9, 2020, instead of timely meeting and conferring, defendants waited until
24 4:23 p.m. to send a 60-page meet and confer letter demanding a response from plaintiff before
25 close of business 3-days later (November 13, 2020), a date where 4 depositions had been set
26 between 11:00 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. See Laird Decl. ¶4 and Defendant’s Exhibit C. Nevertheless,
27 despite defense counsel’s unreasonable timeline, plaintiff endeavored to begin responding to the
28 60-page correspondence in 3 days and had made substantial progress. Id. At 9:58 a.m. on Friday,
- 3!
-
PLAINTIFF’S SEPARATE STATEMENT IN OPPOSITION TO DEFENDANT ENLOE MEDICAL CENTER’S MOTION TO
COMPEL RESPONSES TO REQUESTS FOR PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS - SET TWO.
1 November 13, 2020, before the time to reply on the already unreasonable timeline had lapsed,
2 plaintiff’s counsel received notice from yet another attorney representing defendant indicating that
3 they would be appearing ex-parte on Monday, November 16, 2020 to request an order shortening
4 time for these motions. See Laird Decl. ¶4 and Exhibit 1. At the depositions later that morning,
5 plaintiff’s counsel confirmed with the attorney who authored the November 9, 2020 meet and
6 confer correspondence that they had disregarded their own timeline for plaintiff’s counsel to even
7 respond. Ian Scharg, counsel for defendants indicated he realized the predicament, but that they
8 did not “want to blow any deadlines” with the discovery cut-off approaching that Monday. I
9 confirmed with Mr. Scharg that since they had filed their application before giving me a chance to
10 respond, that they no longer required a response from me “by 5:00 p.m. on Friday, November 13,
11 2020” as indicated in their original November 9th correspondence. See Laird Decl. ¶4 and Exhibit
12 2.
13 With this as a background, defendant now comes before this Court, without giving proper
14 notice, asking for $760 dollars in stations for preparing and filing a motion before even giving
15 plaintiff’s counsel an opportunity to respond on their own unilaterally selected timeline. It is
16 frankly outrageous. Moreover, defendants ask that plaintiff be precluded from serving additional
17 objections to the request for production of documents and misrepresent the date that responsive
18 objections were due. These RFPD’s were served after the requests for admissions and after
19 the from interrogatories. Specifically, the were served electronically on October 1, 2020,
20 which a last date for service of responses or objections as November 3, 2020. Plaintiff served
21 timely objections on October 29, 2020.
22 This request is, in fact, predicated on poorly worded RFA’s, almost every single one of
23 which lacks any date or timeframe, which in this particular case makes them almost impossible to
24 answer and consequently the form interrogatory served with it could not be responded to. Had
25 defendants waited for plaintiff’s meet and confer efforts they would have seen that agreements to
26 modify or relate the requests to specific time frames could possibly have cured their defective
27 requests or that plaintiff was agreeable to serving amended responses based upon their meet and
28 confer efforts. Instead, defendant’s apparently did not want to “blow their deadline,” so they
- 4!
-
PLAINTIFF’S SEPARATE STATEMENT IN OPPOSITION TO DEFENDANT ENLOE MEDICAL CENTER’S MOTION TO
COMPEL RESPONSES TO REQUESTS FOR PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS - SET TWO.
1 disregarded their own timeline, spent hours writing a motion and filing it before even engaging in
2 actual, good faith meet and confer efforts, and now blame plaintiff’s counsel for this undertaking.
3 To put it mildly, this lacks merit.
4 The documents at issue require Plaintiff first to respond to Requests for Admissions and
5 17.1 Form Interrogatories. Given plaintiff’s failings in drafting specific, time related RFA’s
6 plaintiff was unable to answer and instead served timely objections to each. The poor drafting of
7 the RFA’s correspondingly preclude plaintiff from answering the 17.1 form interrogatories, which
8 are predicated on plaintiff being able to answer the RFA’s. Defendants did not meet and confer in
9 good faith within their own timeline and allow clarification or further responses served to the
10 RFA’s. Instead, their lack of diligence created a boatload of necessary work for the Court and
11 counsel. Plaintiff’s counsel is willing to provide responsive documents herein, subject to the
12 privilege objections previously and timely made, for those requests the Court orders or which
13 counsel can agree upon.
14 However, the facts are crucial in understanding the inadequate nature of the defects in
15 defendants requests. As a background, Ms. Newton was admitted to Enloe Medical Center on
16 September 11, 2019. See Laird Decl. ¶5. She remained at the hospital until September 21, 2019,
17 when she was transferred to Cal Park Rehabilitation Center, a skilled nursing facility. Ms. Newton,
18 however, was then transferred back to Enloe Medical Center on October 8, 2019 where she
19 remained until October 17, 2019. Moreover, Ms. Newton then had multiple encounters with the
20 defendant hospital following her October 17, 2019 discharge, including until recently in 2020.
21 Moreover, there have been depositions of staff and doctors at the Enloe Medical Center wound
22 clinic and other discovery related to these encounters. With this as a background, defendants
23 served requests for admissions that related to no particular date, time, or hospital admission that
24 would have permitted plaintiff to adequately understand what they were asking to plaintiff to
25 admit. Simply arguing now that “this matter clearly relates to a single hospital stay,” does not
26 accurately portray the full picture of this case and it certainly does not cure the defect in the
27 original request for admission that wholly lacked any timeframe whatsoever. Instead defendant
28
- 5!
-
PLAINTIFF’S SEPARATE STATEMENT IN OPPOSITION TO DEFENDANT ENLOE MEDICAL CENTER’S MOTION TO
COMPEL RESPONSES TO REQUESTS FOR PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS - SET TWO.
1 now comes before this Court and asks the Court to re-read and re-write its requests for admissions
2 to make them discernible, clear as to time, and relevant to the actual allegations in the complaint.
3 The balance of the requests for admissions, which are predicates to the form interrogatories
4 and thus for this request for production of documents, all suffer from the same defects as noted
5 above and as addressed in plaintiff’s separate statement in that motion, where there is absolutely no
6 reference to time, admission, or hospital stay and the like. Defendant would like plaintiff to divine
7 this and have the Court re-write a date into each RFA, but the Court should refuse to do so. In
8 addition many of the “contention” requests are not related to the contentions actually made in the
9 complaint, such that defendant’s misstate facts. Instead of using the facts as alleged in the
10 complaint, defendant changes the various states of mind, changes the allegations and then demands
11 that plaintiff admit or deny the request based upon a newfound set of allegations that do not exist
12 in the case. Often times, the defendants do this while adding multiple, compound layers to the
13 their request instead of one, specific contention or allegation. This violates CCP §2033.060(f),
14 which is in place to prevent the use of compound admissions so as to require more information
15 than could be obtained by 35 separate questions, which is exactly what defendant attempts to do
16 here.
17 Moreover, defendant repeatedly indicates that plaintiff is required to make a reasonable
18 inquiry in order to be able to respond to the RFA’s. This “reasonable inquiry” does not mean
19 counsel has to reasonably inquire with the defendants to understand and clarify their requests so
20 that we can comprehend what is being asked, about which admission, related to which wound, or
21 which state of mind. Lastly, at the time the RFA’s were being drafted and responded to, the expert
22 disclosure had not taken place.
23 Plaintiff maintains that as predicated upon the improper RFA’s these requests for
24 documents seeks disclosure of privileged information or documentation, including, protected by the
25 attorney-client privilege, the work product doctrine, or also seeks information that is in Defendants'
26 possession, custody, or control, or information that is equally available to Defendants including
27 documents in the control of its counsel or corporate counsel.
28
- 6!
-
PLAINTIFF’S SEPARATE STATEMENT IN OPPOSITION TO DEFENDANT ENLOE MEDICAL CENTER’S MOTION TO
COMPEL RESPONSES TO REQUESTS FOR PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS - SET TWO.
Friday, November 20, 2020 The Law Firm of Sean R. Laird
1
2
3 __________________________
SEAN R. LAIRD,
4 Attorney for Plaintiffs
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
- 7!
-
PLAINTIFF’S SEPARATE STATEMENT IN OPPOSITION TO DEFENDANT ENLOE MEDICAL CENTER’S MOTION TO
COMPEL RESPONSES TO REQUESTS FOR PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS - SET TWO.
Preview
Sean R. Laird (SBN 214916) 11/20/2020 1 The Law Firm of Sean R. Laird 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 SEPARATE 12 STATEMENT IN OPPOSITION TO Plaintiffs, DEFENDANT ENLOE MEDICAL 13 CENTER’S MOTION TO COMPEL 14 vs. RESPONSES TO REQUESTS PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS - 15 SET TWO. ENLOE MEDICAL CENTER; and DOES 1 - 16 50, inclusive, 17 Defendants, DATE: November 25, 2020 TIME: 9:00 a.m. 18 DEPT: 1 19 Hon. Tamara L. Mosbarger 20 21 22 Complaint Filed: 5/29/2020 Trial Date: 12/14/2020 23 24 25 PLAINTIFF PATSY NEWTON hereby submits PLAINTIFF’S SEPARATE 26 STATEMENT IN OPPOSITION TO DEFENDANT ENLOE MEDICAL CENTER’S 27 MOTION TO COMPEL RESPONSES TO REQUESTS FOR PRODUCTION OF 28 DOCUMENTS - SET TWO as follows: - 1! - PLAINTIFF’S SEPARATE STATEMENT IN OPPOSITION TO DEFENDANT ENLOE MEDICAL CENTER’S MOTION TO COMPEL RESPONSES TO REQUESTS FOR PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS - SET TWO. REQUEST FOR PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS, SET TWO 1 REQUEST FOR PRODUCTION 31: 2 All documents referenced in your response to Form Interrogatories, Set Two. 3 PLAINTIFF'S RESPONSE TO REQUEST FOR PRODUCTION 31: 4 Plaintiffs object that it seeks disclosure of privileged information or documentation, including, 5 protected by the attorney-client privilege, the work product doctrine, or to the extent this requests seeks information that is in Defendants' possession, custody, or control, or information that is 6 equally available to Defendants including documents in the control of its counsel or corporate counsel. As plaintiff was unable to answer the interrogatories, there are no responsive documents. 7 REASON FOR FURTHER RESPONSE: 8 Plaintiff's objection to this request is without merit or too general. Plaintiff's objection that 9 she has no responsive documents as she was unable to answer defendant’s interrogatories is 10 inadequate, incomplete, or evasive. Plaintiff’s response fails to comply with California Code of 11 Civil Procedure §§ 2031.220 and 2031.230. 12 California Code of Civil Procedure section 2031.240(b)(2) requires responding party set 13 forth clearly the extent of, and the specific ground for, her objection. 14 Further, section 2031.240(c) dictates if an objection is based on a claim of privilege or a 15 claim that the information sought is protected work product, the response shall provide sufficient 16 factual information for other parties to evaluate the merits of that claim, including, if necessary, a 17 privilege log. 18 Defendant is entitled to discover information and documents with which to assess a 19 plaintiff's ability or inability to admit or deny certain material facts. Plaintiff has refused to provide 20 21 any answers to defendant’s request for admissions and instead provided only blanket objections 22 without any attempt to answer such requests. Because defendant is entitled to answers to its 23 request for admissions, defendant is entitled to answers to its form interrogatories and its request 24 for production. 25 Plaintiff’s response to defendant Enloe Medical Center’s request for production does not 26 comply with applicable procedural requirements; fails to respond to the 27 questions posed; and is replete with unmeritorious objections. 28 - 2! - PLAINTIFF’S SEPARATE STATEMENT IN OPPOSITION TO DEFENDANT ENLOE MEDICAL CENTER’S MOTION TO COMPEL RESPONSES TO REQUESTS FOR PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS - SET TWO. 1 PLAINTIFF’S REASON TO DENY FURTHER RESPONSE: 2 Before the Court is defendant’s hastily filed motion to compel responses to its Request for 3 Production of Documents - Set Two. Before plaintiff could even respond to defendant’s meet and 4 confer correspondence or serve amended responses to this group of discovery (some of which 5 would very likely had obviated the need for this motion) defendant noticed an ex-parte application 6 for an order shortening time to have this motion heard. See Declaration of Sean R. Laird in 7 Opposition to Defendant’s Motion to Compel Defendant Enloe Medical Center’s Requests for 8 Admissions, (hereinafter “Laird Decl.”) ¶2, filed herewith. Plaintiff will continue to make an effort 9 to meet and confer in an attempt to narrow the scope of the discovery dispute for the Court. Id. 10 However, defendant’s own lack of diligence in serving discovery, timely meeting and conferring, 11 and timely bringing a motion to compel before the discovery cut-off is apparently what led them to 12 abandon any meaningful meet and confer efforts (upon their previously designated timeline) and 13 file three motions on shortened time only to claim it is plaintiff who has caused this unnecessary 14 logjam. This is false, a misrepresentation of the facts, and lacks candor to this Court. 15 The complaint in this matter was filed May 29, 2020. See Laird Decl. ¶3. Defendants were 16 served June 12, 2020. Id. Defendants have had the very document upon which they base their 17 Requests for Admissions and Form Interrogatories since that date. Id. Moreover, the Court held the 18 hearing setting preference in this matter on August 12, 2020 and signed the order granting 19 preference on August 21, 2020. Id. Defendants waited until September 22, 2020 to serve the 20 Requests for Admissions and Form Interrogatories upon which this motion is based. Plaintiff’s 21 served objections to these requests on October 26, 2020. Id. The last day to set a timely motion to 22 compel was November 3, 2020. Id. 23 On November 9, 2020, instead of timely meeting and conferring, defendants waited until 24 4:23 p.m. to send a 60-page meet and confer letter demanding a response from plaintiff before 25 close of business 3-days later (November 13, 2020), a date where 4 depositions had been set 26 between 11:00 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. See Laird Decl. ¶4 and Defendant’s Exhibit C. Nevertheless, 27 despite defense counsel’s unreasonable timeline, plaintiff endeavored to begin responding to the 28 60-page correspondence in 3 days and had made substantial progress. Id. At 9:58 a.m. on Friday, - 3! - PLAINTIFF’S SEPARATE STATEMENT IN OPPOSITION TO DEFENDANT ENLOE MEDICAL CENTER’S MOTION TO COMPEL RESPONSES TO REQUESTS FOR PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS - SET TWO. 1 November 13, 2020, before the time to reply on the already unreasonable timeline had lapsed, 2 plaintiff’s counsel received notice from yet another attorney representing defendant indicating that 3 they would be appearing ex-parte on Monday, November 16, 2020 to request an order shortening 4 time for these motions. See Laird Decl. ¶4 and Exhibit 1. At the depositions later that morning, 5 plaintiff’s counsel confirmed with the attorney who authored the November 9, 2020 meet and 6 confer correspondence that they had disregarded their own timeline for plaintiff’s counsel to even 7 respond. Ian Scharg, counsel for defendants indicated he realized the predicament, but that they 8 did not “want to blow any deadlines” with the discovery cut-off approaching that Monday. I 9 confirmed with Mr. Scharg that since they had filed their application before giving me a chance to 10 respond, that they no longer required a response from me “by 5:00 p.m. on Friday, November 13, 11 2020” as indicated in their original November 9th correspondence. See Laird Decl. ¶4 and Exhibit 12 2. 13 With this as a background, defendant now comes before this Court, without giving proper 14 notice, asking for $760 dollars in stations for preparing and filing a motion before even giving 15 plaintiff’s counsel an opportunity to respond on their own unilaterally selected timeline. It is 16 frankly outrageous. Moreover, defendants ask that plaintiff be precluded from serving additional 17 objections to the request for production of documents and misrepresent the date that responsive 18 objections were due. These RFPD’s were served after the requests for admissions and after 19 the from interrogatories. Specifically, the were served electronically on October 1, 2020, 20 which a last date for service of responses or objections as November 3, 2020. Plaintiff served 21 timely objections on October 29, 2020. 22 This request is, in fact, predicated on poorly worded RFA’s, almost every single one of 23 which lacks any date or timeframe, which in this particular case makes them almost impossible to 24 answer and consequently the form interrogatory served with it could not be responded to. Had 25 defendants waited for plaintiff’s meet and confer efforts they would have seen that agreements to 26 modify or relate the requests to specific time frames could possibly have cured their defective 27 requests or that plaintiff was agreeable to serving amended responses based upon their meet and 28 confer efforts. Instead, defendant’s apparently did not want to “blow their deadline,” so they - 4! - PLAINTIFF’S SEPARATE STATEMENT IN OPPOSITION TO DEFENDANT ENLOE MEDICAL CENTER’S MOTION TO COMPEL RESPONSES TO REQUESTS FOR PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS - SET TWO. 1 disregarded their own timeline, spent hours writing a motion and filing it before even engaging in 2 actual, good faith meet and confer efforts, and now blame plaintiff’s counsel for this undertaking. 3 To put it mildly, this lacks merit. 4 The documents at issue require Plaintiff first to respond to Requests for Admissions and 5 17.1 Form Interrogatories. Given plaintiff’s failings in drafting specific, time related RFA’s 6 plaintiff was unable to answer and instead served timely objections to each. The poor drafting of 7 the RFA’s correspondingly preclude plaintiff from answering the 17.1 form interrogatories, which 8 are predicated on plaintiff being able to answer the RFA’s. Defendants did not meet and confer in 9 good faith within their own timeline and allow clarification or further responses served to the 10 RFA’s. Instead, their lack of diligence created a boatload of necessary work for the Court and 11 counsel. Plaintiff’s counsel is willing to provide responsive documents herein, subject to the 12 privilege objections previously and timely made, for those requests the Court orders or which 13 counsel can agree upon. 14 However, the facts are crucial in understanding the inadequate nature of the defects in 15 defendants requests. As a background, Ms. Newton was admitted to Enloe Medical Center on 16 September 11, 2019. See Laird Decl. ¶5. She remained at the hospital until September 21, 2019, 17 when she was transferred to Cal Park Rehabilitation Center, a skilled nursing facility. Ms. Newton, 18 however, was then transferred back to Enloe Medical Center on October 8, 2019 where she 19 remained until October 17, 2019. Moreover, Ms. Newton then had multiple encounters with the 20 defendant hospital following her October 17, 2019 discharge, including until recently in 2020. 21 Moreover, there have been depositions of staff and doctors at the Enloe Medical Center wound 22 clinic and other discovery related to these encounters. With this as a background, defendants 23 served requests for admissions that related to no particular date, time, or hospital admission that 24 would have permitted plaintiff to adequately understand what they were asking to plaintiff to 25 admit. Simply arguing now that “this matter clearly relates to a single hospital stay,” does not 26 accurately portray the full picture of this case and it certainly does not cure the defect in the 27 original request for admission that wholly lacked any timeframe whatsoever. Instead defendant 28 - 5! - PLAINTIFF’S SEPARATE STATEMENT IN OPPOSITION TO DEFENDANT ENLOE MEDICAL CENTER’S MOTION TO COMPEL RESPONSES TO REQUESTS FOR PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS - SET TWO. 1 now comes before this Court and asks the Court to re-read and re-write its requests for admissions 2 to make them discernible, clear as to time, and relevant to the actual allegations in the complaint. 3 The balance of the requests for admissions, which are predicates to the form interrogatories 4 and thus for this request for production of documents, all suffer from the same defects as noted 5 above and as addressed in plaintiff’s separate statement in that motion, where there is absolutely no 6 reference to time, admission, or hospital stay and the like. Defendant would like plaintiff to divine 7 this and have the Court re-write a date into each RFA, but the Court should refuse to do so. In 8 addition many of the “contention” requests are not related to the contentions actually made in the 9 complaint, such that defendant’s misstate facts. Instead of using the facts as alleged in the 10 complaint, defendant changes the various states of mind, changes the allegations and then demands 11 that plaintiff admit or deny the request based upon a newfound set of allegations that do not exist 12 in the case. Often times, the defendants do this while adding multiple, compound layers to the 13 their request instead of one, specific contention or allegation. This violates CCP §2033.060(f), 14 which is in place to prevent the use of compound admissions so as to require more information 15 than could be obtained by 35 separate questions, which is exactly what defendant attempts to do 16 here. 17 Moreover, defendant repeatedly indicates that plaintiff is required to make a reasonable 18 inquiry in order to be able to respond to the RFA’s. This “reasonable inquiry” does not mean 19 counsel has to reasonably inquire with the defendants to understand and clarify their requests so 20 that we can comprehend what is being asked, about which admission, related to which wound, or 21 which state of mind. Lastly, at the time the RFA’s were being drafted and responded to, the expert 22 disclosure had not taken place. 23 Plaintiff maintains that as predicated upon the improper RFA’s these requests for 24 documents seeks disclosure of privileged information or documentation, including, protected by the 25 attorney-client privilege, the work product doctrine, or also seeks information that is in Defendants' 26 possession, custody, or control, or information that is equally available to Defendants including 27 documents in the control of its counsel or corporate counsel. 28 - 6! - PLAINTIFF’S SEPARATE STATEMENT IN OPPOSITION TO DEFENDANT ENLOE MEDICAL CENTER’S MOTION TO COMPEL RESPONSES TO REQUESTS FOR PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS - SET TWO. Friday, November 20, 2020 The Law Firm of Sean R. Laird 1 2 3 __________________________ SEAN R. LAIRD, 4 Attorney for Plaintiffs 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 - 7! - PLAINTIFF’S SEPARATE STATEMENT IN OPPOSITION TO DEFENDANT ENLOE MEDICAL CENTER’S MOTION TO COMPEL RESPONSES TO REQUESTS FOR PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS - SET TWO.