§ 2033.280.Failure to serve timely response; waiver of objections;

Missing the response deadline in Section 2033.250 carries a sharper cost for requests for admission than it does for most other discovery methods. A party who fails to serve a timely response waives every objection it might otherwise have raised, including privilege and work-product objections that would normally be available. That waiver applies automatically the moment the deadline passes without a timely response.

The waiver is not necessarily permanent. On motion, a court may relieve the responding party from it, but only on a two-part showing: the party has since served a response that substantially complies with Sections 2033.210 through 2033.230, and the original failure to respond on time resulted from mistake, inadvertence, or excusable neglect rather than deliberate delay. Absent that relief, the requesting party can move for an order that the genuineness of the documents and the truth of the matters specified in the requests be deemed admitted outright, along with a monetary sanction. The court must grant that order unless the responding party has served, before the hearing, a proposed response substantially complying with Section 2033.220, and a monetary sanction against whoever caused the motion is mandatory regardless of how the deemed-admitted request comes out.