Motion To Compel Responses To Form Interrogatories And Request For Sanctions
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Matter on the LAW AND MOTION / DISCOVERY Calendar for Wednesday, Aug-05-2026. Line 5. PLAINTIFF CARMELA TROTTA's, AN INDIVIDUAL, Motion To Compel Responses To Form Interrogatories And Request For Sanctions.
Plaintiff Carmela Trotta's motion to compel responses to form interrogatories is denied as moot and her request for monetary sanctions is denied. Defendants' service of verified responses to the form interrogatories moots the principal portion of the motion. If Trotta believes that defendants' recently served responses are inadequate in some way, her counsel must meet and confer with defendants' counsel and, if that meet and confer does not resolve all issues, she may file a new motion to compel.
While defendants' service of their responses after the filing of this motion would normally result in monetary sanctions awarded to Trotta, the extraordinarily large amount of monetary sanctions sought by Trotta on this extraordinarily simple discovery motion renders her request for monetary sanctions without substantial justification. (See Serrano v. Unruh (1982) 32 Cal. 3d 621, 635, quoting Brown v. Stackler (7th Cir. 1980) 612 F.2d 1057, 1059 ("A fee request that appears unreasonably inflated is a special circumstance permitting the trial court to reduce the award or deny one altogether. 'If ... the Court were required to award a reasonable fee when an outrageously unreasonable one has been asked for, claimants would be encouraged to make unreasonable demands, knowing that the only unfavorable consequence of such misconduct would be reduction of their fee to what they should have asked for in the first place.
To discourage such greed, a severer reaction is needful....'") (ellipsis in original)).
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