Discovery
Demands, responses, verifications, depositions, and the motions each of them produces.
The sequence
- Day 0Demand servedThe manner of service fixes every extension that follows.
- +30 daysResponse duePlus the service extension. Serving late waives every objection, privilege included.
- With itVerificationObjections need none, substantive answers do. This is the fault line.
- +45 daysMotion to compel furtherQuasi-jurisdictional, and only if a verified response started the clock.
- Any timeWritten extensionIt has to recite the original date, the new date, and the sets it covers.
This sequence is the shape of the stage, not a calculator. Dates come from calcourtdeadlines.com.
Guides in this stage7
- Serving a second set before the first is answeredNothing in the Act makes the next set wait, and 2030.030(b) says so in terms. The 35 is one budget per responding party across every set, the declaration counts what you have propounded rather than what is pending, and the Act never mentions withdrawing a set.
- The 45-day deadline to compel furtherQuasi-jurisdictional. Unverified responses may never have started the clock.
- When opposing counsel stops respondingNo response and a bad response are two different motions on two different clocks. The cheap one has no 45-day limit and needs no meet and confer declaration, and almost nobody files it.
- Auditing a meet and confer letterThe dangerous ones are mostly right. The correct parts pressure you into conceding the parts that are wrong.
- When you cannot instruct your client not to answerIrrelevance is not a ground. The objection everyone makes is preserved anyway, and the one they skip is the only one that waives.
- What is actually privileged at a depositionThe tender defines the medical waiver, not the complaint. The lien-doctor referral is not privileged, and immigration status is the one clean instruction.
- Destructive testing on your own client's propertyThe inspection chapter reaches property held by another party, so the letter demanding your protocol cites two sections that do not apply. What they are owed comes from the CMO, their own demand, the expert exchange, and a preservation duty you cannot answer by sending a protocol.