§ 2023.050.Monetary sanctions; failure to respond in good faith to document request; production

This section layers a separate, fixed penalty on top of whatever other sanctions Chapter 7 already allows, aimed squarely at a specific pattern of gamesmanship around document production. A court must order a $1,000 sanction, paid to the party who requested the documents, if it finds any of three things: the responding party, person, or attorney did not respond in good faith to a document request or inspection demand; that party produced the requested documents only within the seven days before a hearing on a motion to compel that production, one filed because of the earlier failure to respond in good faith; or that party failed to confer in good faith about the request before the motion was filed. The pattern the section targets is familiar to anyone who has litigated a motion to compel: a party stonewalls a document request, forces the other side to prepare and file a motion, and then produces the documents at the last minute, mooting the motion but leaving the requesting party to absorb the cost of preparing it anyway.

The section builds in both an escape hatch and an added consequence. A court can excuse the sanction on written findings that the party or attorney acted with substantial justification or that imposing it would otherwise be unjust, and it can, at its discretion, order a sanctioned attorney to report the sanction to the State Bar within 30 days. Because the sanction is aimed at bad faith rather than simple error, the section presumes that a natural person who was not represented by an attorney at the time acted in good faith, a presumption the requesting party can only overcome with clear and convincing evidence. As with every sanction in this chapter, it can only be imposed after notice to the party or attorney facing it and an opportunity to be heard.