Case Number: BC642163 Hearing Date: June 04, 2018 Dept: 61

Plaintiff Azam Shirazi’s Motion to Compel Defendant’s Person Most Qualified to Answer Deposition Questions is DENIED.

A party may make a motion compelling a witness’s deposition “after service of a deposition notice” if that witness “fails to appear for examination, or to proceed with it.” (Code Civ. Proc. § 2025.450, subd. (a).) A deponent that is not a natural persons may produce for deposition its “agents who are most qualified to testify on its behalf as to those matters to the extent of any information known or reasonably available to the deponent.” (Code Civ. Proc. § 2025.230.)

Shirazi argues that Jacob Doss, the PMK produced by Ford for deposition on April 11, 2018, testified to only nine of 38 categories of information noticed, and for those subjects upon which he offered testimony often gave noncommittal responses or testified from a limited scope of materials. (Motion at pp. 3–4.)

Ford argues that the present motion is beyond the discovery deadline, that Shirazi failed to meet and confer, and that it is prepared, and has already agreed, to produce other PMKs to discuss other (but not all) categories named in Shirazi’s deposition notice. (Opposition at p. 1.)

The court agrees with Ford that the present motion is untimely. All discovery motions must be heard “on or before the 15th day . . . before the date initially set for the trial of the action.” (Code Civ. Proc. § 2024.020, subd. (a).) Trial was originally set for May 15, 2018, but on April 18 was continued to August 21, 2018, with “[a]ll discovery deadlines to remain closed except for expert witness discovery and deposition.” The deadline to hear the motion was thus 15 days before May 15. Because this date and the date initially set for trial have passed, and because the court has not extended the discovery deadlines for the matters implicated in the present motion, the court is without discretion to hear the present motion. (See Pelton-Shepherd Industries, Inc. v. Delta Packaging Products, Inc. (2008) 165 Cal.App.4th 1568, 1586 [holding that trial court abused its discretion by hearing discovery motion after cutoff date without hearing argument on whether leave to reopen discovery should be granted].)

The court also agrees with Ford that Shirazi failed to adequately meet and confer before filing the present motion. Any motion to compel deposition must be accompanied by a meet and confer declaration. (Code Civ. Proc. § 2025.450, subd. (b)(2).) The statutory meet-and-confer condition “requires that counsel attempt to talk the matter over, compare their views, consult, and deliberate” (Townsend v. Superior Court (1998) 61 Cal.App.4th 1431, 1439), and that “attempting informal resolution means more than the mere attempt by the discovery proponent “to persuade the objector of the error of his ways.” (Clement v. Alegre (2009) 177 Cal.App.4th 1277, 1294.) Here, it is evident that Ford was willing to produce witnesses and testimony response to Shirazi’s PMK deposition notice beyond that produced in the Doss deposition. (Lawless Decl. ¶¶ 10–11.) Rather than meeting and conferring on this matter, Shirazi sent a letter the day after deposition restating her position, and one day later filed the instant motion. (Zhang Decl. ¶ 22.) This is insufficient.

The Motion to Compel Deposition is therefore DENIED.