Ryan Crowley vs. California Correctional Health Care Services

A Stipulation and Appointment of Official Reporter Pro Tempore (CV/E-206) is required to be signed by each party, the private court reporter, and the Judge prior to the hearing, if not using a reporter from the Court’s Approved Official Reporter Pro Tempore list.

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TENTATIVE RULING

Plaintiff Ryan Crowley’s (“Plaintiff”) motion for an order compelling Defendant California Correctional Health Care Services (“Defendant”) to serve further responses to Plaintiff’s Form Interrogatories—Employment, Set One is ruled upon as follows.

The notice of motion does not provide notice of the Court’s tentative ruling system, as required by Local Rule 1.06. Moving counsel is directed to contact opposing counsel and advise of Local Rule 1.06 and the Court’s tentative ruling procedure and the manner to request a hearing. If moving counsel is unable to contact opposing counsel prior to the hearing, moving counsel is ordered to appear at the hearing by Zoom or in person.

This is an employment action. The Complaint includes two causes of action: (1) whistleblower retaliation under Labor Code section 1102.5; and (2) retaliation under FEHA. Plaintiff alleges that he was employed by Defendant as a dentist at San Quentin State Prison from December 10,

SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA COUNTY OF SACRAMENTO

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2007 until his termination on August 3, 2022. Plaintiff alleges that in 2014, he began reporting to Alma Clark, D.D.S. (“Dr. Clark”). Plaintiff alleges that Dr. Clark sexually harassed him during group and one-on-one meetings by engaging in various forms of unwanted touching. In May of 2014, Plaintiff filed a discrimination complaint with Defendant. Plaintiff alleges that Defendant took adverse actions against him in retaliation. In August of 2017, Plaintiff filed a lawsuit against Defendant in Marin County alleging sexual harassment and retaliation, which ultimately settled in November of 2017.

Plaintiff then alleges that during the Covid-19 pandemic, Defendant required him to perform routine dental screenings on inmates despite recommendations from the American Dental Association that only urgent and emergent dental procedures be performed. Plaintiff and his coworkers objected and consulted with union representatives, but when Defendant continued to require the screenings, Plaintiff and his coworkers reported their concerns to an OSHA investigator, who ordered the San Quentin Dental Clinic closed due to unsafe practices and procedures following an inspection.

Plaintiff alleges that he thereafter received additional disciplinary action and was ultimately terminated.

Plaintiff served the subject interrogatories in September of 2023. Defendant served its initial responses on January 10, 2024. The parties thereafter engaged in significant meet and confer efforts. On April 25, 2025, Defendant served amended responses. At the same time, Defendant served amended responses to Plaintiff’s Requests for Production of Documents, Set One and produced nearly 2,000 pages of documents consisting primarily of disciplinary materials Plaintiff had previously been provided during his employment. After the parties further met and conferred, Defendant served second amended responses on September 12, 2025. Plaintiff deemed the second amended responses deficient and ultimately filed this motion on January 15, 2016.

At issue in this motion Form Interrogatories—Employment Nos. 201.1, 201.3, 201.4, 207.1, 207.2, 209.2, 211.1, 215.1, 215.2, and 216.1. Plaintiff’s notice of motion also includes No. 201.2, but Defendant’s opposition states that Defendant has agreed to amend its response, and Plaintiff’s reply indicates that Plaintiff no longer seeks further response to No. 201.2. (See Reply MPA, p. 2:25-26.) Thus, the motion is DENIED as moot as to No. 201.2

Code of Civil Procedure Section 2030.230

The primary dispute as outlined in the moving papers is the appropriateness of Defendant’s invocation of Code of Civil Procedure section 2030.230, as this section was invoked in most of the responses at issue. Section 2030.230 states:

If the answer to an interrogatory would necessitate the preparation or the making of a

SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA COUNTY OF SACRAMENTO

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compilation, abstract, audit, or summary of or from the documents of the party to whom the interrogatory is directed, and if the burden or expense of preparing or making it would be substantially the same for the party propounding the interrogatory as for the responding party, it is a sufficient answer to that interrogatory to refer to this section and to specify the writings from which the answer may be derived or ascertained. This specification shall be in sufficient detail to permit the propounding party to locate and to identify, as readily as the responding party can, the documents from which the answer may be ascertained. The responding party shall then afford to the propounding party a reasonable opportunity to examine, audit, or inspect these documents and to make copies, compilations, abstracts, or summaries of them.

(Code Civ. Proc. § 2030.230, emphasis added.)

A party may move to compel further responses to interrogatories on the basis that the responding party’s “exercise of the option to produce documents under Section 2030.230 is unwarranted or the required specification of those documents is inadequate.” (Code Civ. Proc. § 2030.300(a)(2).) A response to interrogatories “shall be as complete and straightforward as the information reasonably available to the responding party permits,” and this requirement applies to a response that invokes section 2030.230. (Code Civ.

Proc. § 2030.220(a).) In other words, a response that invokes section 2030.230 must “purport to represent the interrogated party’s present best and complete answer.” (Fuss v. Superior Court (1969) 273 Cal.App.2d 807, 816.) “A party who makes recourse to this section declares that the information in the specified records is true, accurate, and complete, and that no other information is available to the answering party.” (Deyo v. Kilbourne (1978) 84 Cal.App.3d 771, 784.) Further, section 2030.230 “applies only if the summary is not available and the party specifies the records from which the information can be ascertained.

A broad statement that the information is available from a mass of documents is insufficient.” (Ibid., fn. omitted; emphasis added.)

Based on Fuss, Deyo, and the text of section 2030.230 itself, it is clear that a party relying on section 2030.230 must specify, in the interrogatory response, the documents from which a response that is equivalent to a complete and straightforward interrogatory response can be ascertained. Moreover, answering the interrogatory must require the responding party to prepare a compilation, abstract, audit, or summary of or from documents, and the burden and expense of this preparation must be substantially the same for both parties. Defendant has not satisfied these requirements.

Defendant invoked section 2030.230 in response to Nos. 201.1, 201.3, 201.4, 207.1, 207.2, and 211.1. Nos. 201.1, 201.3, and 201.4 are essentially contention interrogatories that ask whether

SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA COUNTY OF SACRAMENTO

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the employee was terminated or suffered some other adverse employment action, if said termination or adverse action was based on the employee’s job performance, and for all facts, witnesses, and documents related to the termination, adverse employment action, and the employee’s job performance. Nos. 207.1 and 207.2 follow a similar pattern with respect to the employer’s policy for making internal complaints and whether the employee made an internal complaint. No. 211.1 asks the employer to identify each type of benefit to which the employee would have been entitled had the adverse employment action not happened and to specify the amount the employer would have paid the employee.

Of these interrogatories, only No. 211.1 may be construed to require the responding party to create a summary of documents. The remaining interrogatories are akin to contention interrogatories and can inherently be answered without creating a summary of documents. The reasons for Plaintiff’s termination and the identities of individuals involved and related documents are presumably within the personal knowledge of Defendant’s employees.

More problematically, none of Defendant’s responses relying on section 2030.230 specify the documents from which the answer can be ascertained. In each such response, Defendant stated:

Pursuant to Code of Civil Procedure § 2030.230, the answer to this interrogatory may be derived from those documents Defendant has produced concurrently herewith, and specifically in support of Defendant’s Amended Response to Plaintiff’s Requests for Production, Set One, and pursuant to the Stipulated Protective Order. To the extent that Defendant knows of facts and/or the identities of persons relating to the subject matter of this interrogatory, its information is derived from those documents. Defendant incorporates said amended responses as though fully set forth herein.

(See, e.g., Mot. Sep. Stmt., p. 3:10-15.)

In the responses to Nos. 207.1 and 207.2, Defendant also stated, “Defendant further responds that the policies and regulations which apply to the making of complaints were provided to the Plaintiff during his employment, are equally available to Plaintiff, and are available from CCHCS upon request.” (See, e.g., Mot. Sep. Stmt., p. 15:9-11.) These responses do not specify the documents from which the answer can be ascertained. Indeed, Defendant admits that it has produced thousands of pages of documents “in seven sets” (Opp.

MPA, p. 3:6), and argues, “In total, then, some 3,433 pages have been produced in these evident categories, which should give Plaintiff’s counsel ample guidance on using these documents to answer his interrogatories.” (Opp MPA, p. 3:17-19). This argument violates basic principles of discovery. It is not Plaintiff’s counsel task to answer his own interrogatories. Moreover, Defendant has not specified which documents, among the thousands of pages produced across “seven sets,” Plaintiff’s counsel

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should search to ascertain the answer to any particular interrogatory. And it nearly goes without saying that the burden and expense of preparing a summary of the documents would not be the same for both sides, and Defendant’s answer does not provide sufficient detail to allow Plaintiff to ascertain the information as readily as Defendant. This is apparent from a further argument made by Defendant that because it filed a motion for summary judgment, which is currently on calendar, with “some 279 pages [of exhibits], a small fraction of the total produced,” that this “should and does give Plaintiff yet more guidance in the usage of the produced documents to arrive at his own answers to his interrogatories as at issue here pursuant to Code of Civil Procedure § 2030.230.” (Opp.

MPA, pp. 3:25-4:5.) Obviously, the exhibits attached to Defendant’s motion for summary judgment are not part of Defendant’s interrogatory responses. More importantly, the fact that Defendant has narrowed the documents down to 279 pages and essentially compiled a summary of the documents via its motion means that it can answer the interrogatories without invoking section 2030.230.

Thus, Defendant’s invocation of section 2030.230 is rejected. Additionally, in its opposition to Nos. 207.1 and 207.2, Defendant contends that since Plaintiff has been represented by his current counsel since the original sexual harassment complaint in 2014, Plaintiff “has at least identical, or even better, information on this topic than Defendant; much of the information in this regard will be attorney-client privileged between them.” (See, e.g., Opp. Sep. Stmt., p. 25:10-12.) This is not a basis for failing to provide substantive answers to interrogatories. To the extent Defendant also refers to the privilege log it produced with its document production, this argument is also rejected since Defendant’s reliance on section 2030.230 is improper

Evidence Code section 1157

In its responses to Nos. 201.1 and 201.4, as well as in its opposition to Nos. 207.1 and 207.2, Defendant relies on Evidence Code section 1157, which provides that “[n]either the proceedings nor the records of” of certain peer review bodies “shall be subject to discovery.” (Evid. Code § 1157(a).) The Court agrees that Defendant has not shown that this statute is applicable to the present dispute. The statute bars discovery of reports and other documents generated during peer review of care by certain health care professionals.

While interrogatories seeking information found within such documents may be objected to on section 1157 grounds (see, e.g., Mt. Diablo Hospital Medical Center v. Superior Court (1984) 158 Cal.App.3d 344, 346-347), interrogatories that seek identification of such documents are not improper (see, e.g., Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital v. Superior Court of Los Angeles County (1978) 81 Cal.App.3d 626, 636). Here, Defendant’s assertion of section 1157 is overbroad and clearly does not excuse Defendant from identifying documents as requested in the interrogatories.

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Form Interrogatory No. 209.2

This interrogatory asks for information related to all prior civil actions filed by an employee against the defendant employer related to his or her employee in the past 10 years, and asks that for each civil action, the responding party identify the employee, the court and case information, and the employer’s attorney, and state whether the action is still pending. Defendant objected and identified only Plaintiff’s 2017 lawsuit against Defendant. Defendant maintains that since it is a state agency it is sued regularly, and thus the inquiry required to identify each case would be “titanic.” (Opp.

Sep. Stmt., p. 33:11.) Further, Defendant contends that the interrogatory raises privacy issues for the employees involved and risks violation of confidentiality agreements. Defendant also contends that the discovery will likely have little benefit, arguing, “Defendant does not necessarily dispute that the scope of discovery may include comparator evidence, but the fact is that no case is truly very comparable to another.” (Opp. Sep. Stmt., p. 33:16-18.) Plaintiff has offered to narrow the request “to civil actions involving claims of retaliation for whistleblower activity, particularly related to COVID-19 safety concerns.” (Opp.

Sep. Stmt., p. 32:17-18.) However, Defendant contends that this would still require a significant undertaking.

Defendant’s arguments are rejected. Defendant makes no effort to show that the time and labor required to respond to this interrogatory would actually be burdensome. The Court will not assume that such a burden exists simply because Defendant is a state agency. The Court also finds that Plaintiff’s proposed limitation is reasonable and imposes it here. This effectively eliminates any potential burden, since it cuts the number of years Defendant must search roughly in half since it only involves COVID-19 safety protocols. Additionally, Defendant’s arguments related to privacy and confidentiality are rejected. The interrogatory clearly seeks only publicly available information. Finally, Defendant’s argument that the comparator evidence is unlikely to be relevant is rejected, as it is inappropriate for Defendant to determine whether information is relevant or not.

Form Interrogatory Nos. 215.1 and 215.2

No. 215.1 asks if Defendant or anyone acting on its behalf interviewed any person concerning the adverse employment action, and if so, for certain information about the interview. No. 215.2 asks essentially the same questions but with regards to statements obtained. These interrogatories mirror the general Form Interrogatory Nos. 12.2 and 12.3. Defendant objected on various grounds before responding that it has not interviewed anyone or obtained any statements other than counsel’s interviews in anticipation of litigation, which Defendant contends are protected by the attorney work product doctrine. Defendant also referred Plaintiff to certain exhibits it produced in its amended responses to Plaintiff’s document requests.

SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA COUNTY OF SACRAMENTO

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Defendant has not shown that the attorney work product doctrine excuses it from responding to these interrogatories. Form interrogatories asking for information about interviews and recorded statements “usually must be answered.” (Coito v. Superior Court (2012) 54 Cal.4th 480, 502.) The objecting party must make “a preliminary or foundational showing that answering the interrogatory would reveal the attorney’s tactics, impressions, or evaluation of the case, or would result in opposing counsel taking undue advantage of the attorney’s industry or efforts.” (Ibid.) Defendant has not made such a showing. Nor does Defendant’s response state whether anyone acting on its behalf conducted interviews or obtained statements.

Form Interrogatory No. 216.1

This interrogatory asks for facts, persons, and documents related to Defendant’s denials and affirmative defenses. Defendant objected on various grounds and did not provide a substantive response. Defendant’s opposition argument states, “Defendant simply submits that, perhaps above all others subject to Plaintiff’s motion, the answers to this interrogatory can very clearly be determined by reference to the Motion for Summary Judgment or, in the Alternative, Summary Adjudication and supporting papers, and pursuant to Code of Civil Procedure § 2030.230.” (Opp. Sep. Stmt. pp. 46:26-47:2.) Defendant did not invoke section 2030.230 in its response. Defendant’s reference to its motion for summary judgment does not excuse it from submitting to discovery.

Disposition

Pursuant to the above discussion, Plaintiff’s motion to compel is GRANTED in full, except with respect to Form Interrogatory No. 201.2, as to which it is DENIED as moot.

Defendant shall serve verified further responses by no later than February 20, 2026.

This minute order is effective immediately. No formal order or other notice is required. (Code Civ. Proc. § 1019.5; Cal. Rules of Court, rule 3.1312.)