Defendant Donna Mize’s unopposed motion to dismiss the action of plaintiff for failure to obey court orders and for monetary sanctions of $519 is denied without prejudice. Defendant offered no legal authority to support a motion to dismiss and instead should have been more properly titled a motion for terminating and monetary sanctions against plaintiff.

Defendant showed plaintiff did not comply with the Court’s 11/29/2016 Order; however, defendant did not state any facts showing: (1) the relevance of the discovery requests to some issue in the case or prejudice to defendant from plaintiff’s failing to comply with the Court’s Order; (2) any attempt to obtain compliance outside of Court; or (3) why lesser sanctions than terminating sanctions would be ineffective. Weil & Brown, Cal. Practice Guide: Civil Procedure Before Trial (The Rutter Group 2016) ¶ 8:2318.

The Court has discretion to determine which sanctions to impose. Deyo v. Kilbourne (1978) 84 Cal.App.3d 771, 796. Factors that may be relevant in exercising this discretion include:

1) The time which has elapsed since interrogatories were served;

2) Whether the party served was previously given a voluntary extension of time;

3) The number of interrogatories propounded;

4) Whether the unanswered questions sought information which was difficult to obtain;

5) Whether the answers supplied were evasive and incomplete;

6) The number of questions which remained unanswered;

7) Whether the questions which remain unanswered are material to a particular claim or defense;

8) Whether the answering party has acted in good faith, and with reasonable diligence;

9) The existence of prior orders compelling discovery and the answering party’s response thereto;

10) Whether the party was unable to comply with the previous order of the court;

11) Whether an order allowing more time to answer would enable the answering party to supply the necessary information; and

12) Whether a sanction short of dismissal or default would be appropriate to the dereliction.

Id. at 796-797.

Although plaintiff did not oppose this motion, has not appeared at the past three hearings, did not provide any justification as to why he has not complied with the Court’s 11/29/2016 Order, Defendant provided no information regarding the discovery at issue (why such discovery is necessary or relevant, when the discovery was served, the number of requests at issue, etc.).

Defendant to give notice.