Comments on: Form Interrogatories

By: Cal Biz Lit

Cal Biz Lit — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 17:23:18 +0000

Objections to Form Interrogatories…

Just a few hours after posting my white paper on written discovery, I encountered this post at Storm’s Employment Law, criticizing the abuse of form interrogatories and raising the issue whether these interrogatories — approved by the California Judi…

By: Bruce Nye

Bruce Nye — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 17:14:26 +0000

Jon-Erik,

Actually, the fact that the Judicial Counsel Form Rogs are not bullet-proof has been established by Nacht & Lewis Architects, Inc. v. Superior Court (1996)
47 Cal.App.4th 214, holding that general form rogs 12.2 and 12.3 violate the work product doctrine and attorney client privilege.

At CalBizLit, I posted a white paper this morning on drafting and responding to written discovery in California. I’ll add a link to your post.

Bruce Nye

By: Jon-Erik G. Storm

Jon-Erik G. Storm — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 20:59:51 +0000

That’s the exception-that-proves-the-rule point, I think. (;

Judicial Council forms are great for pro pers, and often come in handy for practitioners, but it’s hard to abuse a subpoena form. The Interrogatories need to go.

By: Brian Donnelly

Brian Donnelly — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 18:17:14 +0000

I can think of one example where an objection to form may be appropriate, namely, in a case where the application of the specific Form Interrogatory to the Parties’ dispute is ambiguous or unintelligible.
An example of this is Form Interrogatories 14.1 and 14.2, which seem to ask for information related to a negligence per se claim. However, in case where there is no negligence, but where there is an alleged statutory claim, 14.1 would seem to apply, but is really ambiguous as to its application in the context of the Parties’ dispute.
Other examples include personal injury related interrogatories propounded to an entity.
Similarly, when a party applies its own definitions as allowed in Form Interrogatories, and those definitions are ill-conceived, the resulting “Mad Libs” Form Interrogatories can lead to ambiguous, and sometimes absurd, results. One example of this is when a party defines the “incident” without a time-frame, and propounds Form Interrogatories based on a specific time period.