But Section 2023.010 also covers broad conduct, like “making an evasive response” to discovery requests, which is what the city did here, Poon argued. This included “lying through their teeth” and lying repeatedly to the trial court at discovery hearings.
Ordinarily, courts cannot, in the first instance, impose evidentiary or terminating sanctions for an initial failure to respond to an interrogatory, request for admission, or inspection demands; courts can only first impose monetary sanctions, then issue an order requiring the recipient of the request to respond. Only then can courts proceed gradually, Poon replied.
One may not immediately go to the most extreme sanction possible unless monetary sanctions are imposed first to try to induce compliance, he added.
Wednesday’s oral argument stems from Los Angeles County Judge Elihu M. Berle’s decision in October 2020 ordering the city to pay $2.5 million in sanctions for “serious abuse of discovery” in a since-dismissed lawsuit claiming PwC caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damages when it implemented a faulty utility billing system, leading to Los Angeles Department of Water and Power ratepayers to be overcharged.
