On occasion, I'll read an opinion by Justice Wiley that I feel is too harsh or curt (or both).
A plumber allegedly didn't do a great job on work that cost $47,883.40, so the owner of the building had to hire someone else to fix it. The worker who subsequently fixed the problem charged the owner less than $43,883.40, but the owner nonetheless sued the original plumber for a fair piece of change. When the first plumber eventually defaulted, the owner submitted a default package asking for over $1 million, including over $300,000 in attorney's fees. The trial court said "No way" and awarded $120,319.22 total, and the owner appealed.
The Court of Appeal affirms. And isn't shy about explaining why.
Read the whole opinion -- it's 25 pages -- for a full understanding of why the trial court (as well as the Court of Appeal) thought that the owner was unnecessarily churning the case. Plus there's the whole "lack of candor" portion of the opinion. I'm fully on board for everything that Justice Wiley says on this score.
I nonetheless will mention that a small portion of the opinion seems erroneous to me.
The plaintiff here propounded a number of case-dispositive requests for admission, which the defendant didn't respond to (because no one represented him at that point). That's a time-worn strategy, and hardly unique to this particular case.
Justice Wiley takes umbrage at this practice, saying that it was unnecessary since the defendant had already essentially defaulted. I fully agree with that.
But he also attacks the practice writ large. He quotes the Rutter Group to say that "requests for admissions are useful 'only as to matters of lesser importance (for which they may not be necessary, since unimportant matters can usually be handled by stipulation with opposing counsel).'" And then goes on to say that, as a general matter, propounding RFAs on the ultimate issues in the case is "troubling," "not ‘in conformity with the spirit of the law,’" and does not "serve substantial justice.’”
I understand that there are occasional cases that so state, but that attitude seems flatly wrong to me. It's just fine, in my view, to propound case-dispositive RFAs, even at the very outset of the case. Mind you, if you do so, the RFAS may well not be successful, since the other side will almost surely deny them and the trial court will almost equally surely find "substantial justification" for such denials given the early stage of the litigation and hence deny cost of proof sanctions even if you establish the truth of the requests at trial. But if you want to give it a shot, I see nothing improper about the practice.
Moreover, I think the practice has affirmatively beneficial results as well. Sometimes, even early on in the litigation (and especially thereafter), there is in fact no substantial justification whatsoever to deny even case-dispositive RFAs. Say, for example, you rear-end someone on a bridge. Or drive drunk and smash into someone's house. That's pretty much certainly your fault. If you nonetheless deny liability in your answer, well, a case-dispositive RFA on an ultimate fact can -- and should -- be coming your way. And if you have the gonadular fortitude to deny the thing, well, if I'm the judge, I'm imposing cost of proof sanctions every day of the week if liability is ultimately found. Rightly so.
RFAs are designed to narrow disputes, and one (critical) way they do so is to impose a burden on those litigants who might wrongfully create disputes where none actually exist. That's equally true for both "important" (e.g., case dispositive) portions of the case, as well as less portions. RFAs are valuable in both settings.
So I'm 100% on board for Justice Wiley's language as applied here. But I don't think that language applies more broadly, and am worried that a published opinion contains language that litigants might well use to defeat the value (and use) of case-dispositive RFAs.