Crawford v Gordon Los Angeles County Superior Court Case Number BC698561.


From the Los Angeles court's freely available online case records it is Lawzilla's understanding the following occurred:

Attorney Eddie Harris was listed as the lawyer for the plaintiff in a motor vehicle accident case.




The defendant sent a request for documents and written questions to be answered to attorney Harris' client to answer about the case.

No proper responses were timely received.

Despite multiple meet and confer efforts by defendant's attorney, no discovery responses signed and verified by Eddie Harris's client were provided.

Defendant then filed a motion to compel and requested sanctions.

According to Lawzilla's review of the case docket, Mr. Harris did not file any opposition to the motion to compel or to the request for sanctions.

In a tentative ruling the judge agreed and granted the motion. Plaintiff was given ten days to provide proper discovery answers.

The judge also said sanctions were appropriate and granted them "in full".

A total of $1055 in sanctions were imposed against attorney Eddie Harris and his client.




The motion then came up for a hearing in court.

Eddie Harris did not appear in court.

The judge then adopted the tentative ruling as the final order of the court.

In our opinion this is not exactly a good look for an attorney.

First Eddie Harris tried to get away with "unverified" discovery responses from his client.

It is Lawzilla's understanding this means the responses were not signed and verified as true by the client. Potentially, the client may have never even seen the responses and it was something the attorney prepared.

This is why unverified responses are considered tantamount to no discovery responses at all.

Despite multiple meet and confer efforts by defense counsel nothing was provided.

The motion for sanctions was not opposed. To us, that seems to us to be an agreement by attorney Harris that sanctions were appropriate.

There was no appearance in court at the hearing.

Overall, although it is just one case, what the judge said in the court order did not give us a lot of confidence and we would probably look elsewhere for an attorney.

Lawzilla found a California State Bar order, involving a different attorney, indicating that being sanctioned by a judge for discovery abuse can result in State Bar discipline for failing to competently perform legal services.

Eddie Harris was admitted to the California Bar in 1975. Bar Number 64175.

LAW OFFICE OF EDDIE J HARRIS
4929 Wilshire Boulevard Suite 1040
Los Angeles, California 90010

Law School: University of California Los Angeles

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.