St. Paul Fire & Marine Insurance v. Superior Court

This is a petition for mandate or prohibition contending that the trial court lacked power to grant relief from default under the Discovery Act in this case. We agree that the trial court should not have allowed relief from deemed admissions, for reasons we will state.

Introduction

Petitioner St. Paul Fire & Marine Insurance Company (St. Paul) is the insurer defendant in the lawsuit of real party plaintiff Advalloy, Inc. (Advalloy) for breach of contract and bad faith denial of coverage in this environmental insurance coverage case. This petition for writ of mandate or prohibition seeks extraordinary review of the trial court’s order granting Advalloy relief from deemed admissions. St. Paul argues that: (1) under the new Discovery Act the court lacks power to grant any relief from discovery defaults under Code of Civil Procedure section 473 and can only give relief within the strict confines of Code of Civil Procedure section 2033, and further, that subdivision (m) of that statute allows default relief only where some replies to admissions requests have been made, and not where there is total failure to respond to requests for admissions by the time a hearing is held…