§ 2033.240.Signatures; oath; officers or agents; responses with objections

This section allocates who has to put a name, under oath, on a response to requests for admission, and what happens depending on who signs. As a default, the party who was asked to admit something signs the response under oath, confirming personally that the answers given are true. That default gives way only where the entire response consists of objections, since there is nothing factual to verify in a response that admits or denies nothing.

Where the responding party is not an individual, a public or private corporation, partnership, association, or government agency, one of that entity's officers or agents signs under oath on its behalf. If the officer or agent who signs happens to be an attorney acting in that capacity for the entity, the entity waives its lawyer-client privilege and any work-product protection over one narrow category of later discovery: questions probing the identity of the sources behind the information in the response. That waiver reaches who supplied the information, not the substance of privileged communications generally. Finally, the attorney for the responding party, not the client, must sign any response that includes an objection.