## Facts

- Lisa St. Mary sued for fraud and related claims arising from a $475,000 investment loss, naming Thomas Schellenberg and Katherine Mills among the defendants.
- Schellenberg and Mills served a combined total of 119 requests for admissions (RFAs) on St. Mary.
- St. Mary’s counsel sought two two-week extensions; defendants denied the request one day after the original response deadline had passed.
- St. Mary served verified RFA responses four days late, before any hearing on enforcement; responses included simple “admit/deny” answers and some explanatory qualifications.
- Without attempting to meet and confer, defendants moved under Code of Civil Procedure § 2033.280(b) to have all RFAs deemed admitted based solely on untimeliness.
- The trial court reviewed the substance of individual responses, found some not “code-compliant,” and granted the motion in part by deeming 41 of Schellenberg’s RFAs admitted and awarding sanctions; the order did not address Mills’s 14 RFAs.
- St. Mary petitioned for writ relief to vacate the deemed-admitted order and sanctions.

## Issues

1. Whether, under Code of Civil Procedure § 2033.280(c), the trial court had to deny a motion to deem RFAs admitted when the responding party served verified proposed responses before the hearing that were in substantial compliance with § 2033.220, despite being late.
2. Whether the trial court improperly used a § 2033.280 motion (aimed at failure to serve responses) to police alleged defects in particular answers, effectively bypassing § 2033.290’s procedures for compelling further responses.
3. Whether writ relief was appropriate given the litigation impact of deemed admissions.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeal granted the petition for writ of mandate.
- It held the trial court erred by deeming 41 RFAs admitted and awarding sanctions under § 2033.280.
- Because St. Mary served verified proposed responses before the hearing and those responses, taken as a whole, substantially complied with § 2033.220, § 2033.280(c) required denial of the motion in its entirety.
- The court directed the superior court to vacate the deemed-admitted and sanctions order and enter a new order denying the motion.

## Legal Principles

- Under Code of Civil Procedure § 2033.280(c), a court must deny a deemed-admitted motion if, before the hearing, the responding party serves a proposed response that is in substantial compliance with § 2033.220, even if the original responses were untimely.
- Substantial compliance under § 2033.280(c) is assessed by evaluating the proposed response as a whole, not by parsing and striking individual answers.
- A motion under § 2033.280 is not a substitute for a motion to compel further responses under § 2033.290; challenges to the adequacy of specific answers must proceed under § 2033.290 and its procedural requirements.
- Because admissions are conclusive and can be case-dispositive, extraordinary writ review may be warranted to prevent irreparable prejudice from an improper deemed-admitted order.

## Conclusion

The Court of Appeal required denial of deemed-admitted relief where late but verified RFA responses were served before the hearing and substantially complied in the aggregate, and it held that any attack on the sufficiency of particular answers must proceed through the statutory motion-to-compel-further-responses procedure rather than § 2033.280.


St. Mary v. Superior Court, 223 Cal. App. 4th 762, 167 Cal. Rptr. 3d 517 (Ct. App. 2014)