CHARLES DAVID HARE VS SHAHRYAR RAVAYI

Summary: Attorney Andrew Altholz represents the plaintiff. Defendant served discovery requests, but no objections were made by Altholz and no responses were provided by his client. Defendant filed a motion to compel and no opposition was made. A court hearing was held and Attorney Andrew Altholz did not attend. The judge issued $390 in sanctions against attorney Altholz and his client, and ordered the discovery to be answered.



From the Judge:

This is a car accident case.

Attorney Andrew Altholz represents the plaintiff. The defendant served discovery for Mr. Altholz' client to answer, including a request for documents and written questions to answer.

Normally a party has thirty days to provide responses and an attorney has the same amount of time to make objections, or else the objections are waived. No responses or objections were forthcoming from Altholz' office or his client, according to the judge.

The defense attorney sent a meet and confer letter about a situation. Still there was no discovery responses. Defendant then filed a motion to compel.

Andrew Altholz did not file an opposition to the motion.

The judge ordered Altholz' client to provide full responses to the discovery, without objection, within twenty days.

The court then sanctioned attorney Andrew Altholz and his client $390, to be paid within twenty days.



From the Court File:

Attorney Andrew Altholz represents the plaintiff in this auto accident case.

A court hearing for the motion was held.

The court's minute order from the hearing indicates to us Mr. Altholz did not appear. No one appeared for plaintiff. The judge's tentative ruling was adopted as the court's final order.

The court's final order against attorney Andrew Altholtz is here - adopting the tentative ruling as the final order.



Lawzilla Commentary:

The defense attorney has the option of requesting sanctions against just the plaintiff, just the attorney, or both, depending on who is at fault. The judge, though, has the final say on who is sanctioned. Here, the defense attorney believed Andrew Altholz should be sanctioned and the judge agreed.

In this situation we are concerned about what the judge said attorney Altholz did not do:

First, if there was a problem getting discovery responses from his client a common request is to ask for more time. The judge's recitation of events does not show this occurred, although it only refers to no discovery responses being provided.

Second, when the other attorney is sending a letter wondering where the discovery responses are, and probably threatening a motion to compel, we believe a common professional courtesy is to respond to the letter. In our opinion a response could show the attorney is trying to get responses, thus indicating the fault in not answering lies not with the attorney. Again, the judge's account suggests this did not occur.

In our opinion, by not corresponding at all an attorney is inviting a judge to sanction them.

Would you hire Andrew Altholz to be your attorney?

This is only one ruling and one should not draw sweeping conclusions from just one case and ruling. The sanction amount is also small.

However, we are concerned there was no response to multiple discovery requests. Altholz apparently did not ask for an extension of time for his client to prepare responses (or at least nothing is said by the judge about this). He waived any objections to the discovery. We read the judge's comments to be that a meet and and confer letter was ignored. There was no opposition to a motion to sanction him for misconduct, and he apparently did not appear at the hearing.

We are left wondering, is Mr. Altholz still alive?

Andrew Altholz was admitted to the California Bar in 1991. Bar Number 152713.

100 Wilshire Boulevard Suite 700
Santa Monica, California 90401

Law School: Southwestern University

Jared Slater - Our review of the other attorney in the Hare v Ravayi case.

Sanctions are Recoverable as a Judgment - Analysis of the little known fact that sanctions awarded in a lawsuit can be enforced as their own separate judgment. Surprise someone by putting a lien on their bank account, home, wages, etc.