Lawzilla Additional Information:
Per the Sacramento court records defendant is represented by attorney Haewon Kim, who is being sanctioned by the judge. It is our understanding the below tentative ruling was affirmed as the court’s final order.

2016-00194537-CU-OE

Julie Holmes vs. Kong’s Fashionia, Inc.

Nature of Proceeding: Motion for Evidentiary, Issue and/or Monetary Sanctions Re: Production

Filed By: Liu, Joseph

Plaintiff Julie Holmes’ (“Plaintiff”) motion for evidentiary, issue, and monetary sanctions against defendant Kong’s Fasionia, Inc. (“Defendant”) for violating the Court’s discovery order is DENIED in part and GRANTED in part as follows.

On October 10, 2017, the Court granted Plaintiff’s unopposed motion to compel further responses to special interrogatories, set one, and requests for production of documents, set one. Defendant was ordered to serve further verified responses, without objection, no later than October 20, 2017.

Plaintiff now asserts Defendants have violated the Court’s order as Defendant has not served verified, supplemental response to the special interrogatories or document requests. (Declaration of Joseph Liu (“Liu Decl.”) at ¶ 14.)

Defendant’s opposition reflects that further responses without objections to Defendant’s first set of special interrogatories have been belatedly provided and were served on May 16, 2018. (Declaration of Haewon Kim (“Kim Decl.”) at ¶ 5, Exhs. A and B.) Defense counsel explains that he was retained as Defendant’s counsel in January of 2018 and began working with Plaintiff’s counsel regarding the outstanding discovery. (Kim Decl. at ¶ 2.) He indicated that on February 21, 2018, he emailed Plaintiff’s counsel records as part of an informal discovery exchange in an attempt to facilitate the settlement process, but then inadvertently forgot to provide Plaintiff with supplemental discovery responses. (Kim Decl. at ¶ 3.) He then declares that upon receiving Plaintiff’s two motions for issue and evidentiary sanctions, he prepared and served supplemental verified responses on May 16, 2018. (Kim Decl. at ¶ 5, Exhs. A and B.)

Discovery sanctions should be appropriate to the dereliction, and should not exceed that which is required to protect the interests of the party entitled to but denied discovery. The Court has a wide discretion in granting discovery and is granted broad discretionary powers to enforce its orders but its powers are not unlimited. The sanctions the Court may impose are such as are suitable and necessary to enable the party seeking discovery to obtain the objects of the discovery he seeks, but the Court may not impose sanctions which are designed not to accomplish the objects of discovery but to impose punishment. (Vallbona v. Springer (1996) 43 Cal.App.4th 1525, 1545.)

In these circumstances, evidentiary or issue sanctions are not warranted as they would be disproportionate to the prejudice caused by the failure to timely respond in compliance with the Court’s order. Accordingly, the motion for issue and evidentiary sanction is DENIED.

Plaintiff’s request for monetary sanctions, however, is GRANTED. Plaintiff is awarded monetary sanctions against Defendant and its attorney of record, jointly and severally, in the amount of $960, representing three hours of attorney time at the rate of $300, plus the $60 filing fee. Sanctions to be paid no later than June 30, 2018, and, if not paid by that date, Plaintiff may prepare for the Court’s signature a formal order granting the sanctions, which may then be enforced as a separate judgment. (Newland v. Superior Court (1995) 40 Cal.App.4th 608, 615.)