Case Number: BC635436 Hearing Date: January 17, 2018 Dept: 74

NILOFAR KAHROBAI, ET AL.,

Plaintiffs,

vs.

HOTEL FUND LLC, ET AL.,

Defendants

Case No.: BC635436

[TENTATIVE] ORDER GRANTING PLAINTIFF’S MOTION TO COMPEL FURTHER RESPONSES TO DISCOVERY

TENTATIVE RULING: The motion is granted. Defendant Behzad Yasmeh is ordered to provide responses, without objections, to form interrogatories, special interrogatories, request for admission and request for production within 30 days. Defendant Behzad Yasmeh and his attorney Kaplan, Kenegos and Kadin, jointly and severally, are ordered to pay plaintiff sanctions of $3390 within 30 days.

INITIAL NOTE: As this is a family dispute, and the defendants and declarants all share the same last name, first names are used as a matter of clarity. No disrespect is intended.

DISCUSSION

An unverified discovery response is treated as no response. (Steele v. Totah (1986) 180 Cal.App.3d 545, 549; Appleton v. Sup. Ct. (1988) 206 Cal.App.3d 632, 636-637.) Defendant has provided no responses to discovery.

The declarations of Yaniv Yasmeh and defendant Behzad Yasmeh are short on specifics. While they reference a computer crash and, apparently, thousands of documents, no details are provided as to how many documents have been reviewed in the considerably more than a year since Behruz died. There are also no details on the efforts made to recover the files from the computer, or whether anything was recovered on the computer before it crashed, which was months after Behruz’s death.

Although the court is sympathetic to the loss of Behruz and apparent chaos in which Hotel Fund was left, it has been fifteen months. There has been ample time for defendant to obtain at least some information and documents relevant to this case.

The court orders defendant Behzad to provide substantive responses, without objections, within 30 days. Behzad is cautioned that the court would not be inclined to permit Bahzad to introduce any evidence at trial which was not produced in discovery without a showing of good cause, and that Behruz’s files were not reviewed or understood at the time of the discovery responses is not likely to be found to be good cause.

Sanctions

Plaintiff has been patient in allowing defendant time to provide responses, and received the same, non-specific excuses for months. The court notes Behzad is an owner of Hotel Fund and contends he was unaware of the operations of the LLC. This does not absolve him of responsibility. Plaintiff is entitled to sanctions. Defendant Behzad Yasmeh and his attorney Kaplan, Kenegos and Kadin, jointly and severally, are ordered to pay plaintiff sanctions of $3390 within 30 days.