Travel, Entertainment, and Marketing v. Delino CA2/4

Filed 2/24/26 Travel, Entertainment, and Marketing v. Delino CA2/4 NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(a). This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115(a).

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA SECOND APPELLATE DISTRICT DIVISION FOUR

TRAVEL, ENTERTAINMENT, B342675 AND MARKETING, LLC (Los Angeles County Plaintiff and Respondent, Super. Ct. No. v. 21SMCV00061)

BRIAN DELINO, et al.,

Defendants and Appellants.

APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, Edward B. Moreton, Jr., Judge. Reversed and remanded with directions. Williams Iagmin, Jon R. Williams for Defendants and Appellants. John L. Dodd & Associates, John L. Dodd and Bendel Law Group, Jason R. Bendel for Plaintiff and Respondent.

The sole issue in this appeal is whether the trial court abused its discretion by imposing terminating sanctions against defendants for failure to comply with a discovery order. We conclude that, under the circumstances of this case, the court erred in ordering terminating sanctions as the initial remedial measure. At the time sanctions were imposed, the trial was two months away, and the record does not show that lesser sanctions would have failed to obtain defendants’ compliance. We therefore remand the matter to the trial court to consider the appropriate sanctions for defendants’ violation of the discovery order. The court has broad discretion on remand to impose a sanction, or combination of sanctions, that is less severe than a terminating sanction.

BACKGROUND

Travel, Entertainment, and Marketing, LLC (Team) sued its former employee, Brian Delino, and his company, BigDaddyFormals, LLC (collectively, Delino), alleging Delino misappropriated Team’s business, customers, and prospective clients. Delino filed a cross-complaint, alleging Team violated various provisions of the Labor Code when he was a Team’s employee, and, once he left, Team tortiously interfered with his business. In April 2023, Team served Delino with requests for production of documents and special interrogatories. Delino’s responses to the document requests consisted largely of boilerplate objections (e.g., the requests are overbroad, not reasonably particularized, and seek confidential trade secret information). Delino responded to certain special interrogatories, and objected to others (such as an interrogatory seeking the