Newland

The time has come to reassert a well-established but apparently not well-known rule about monetary sanctions in discovery, The rule is that it is an abuse of discretion for a trial court to issue a terminating sanction for failure to pay the sanction. A monetary sanction is immediately enforceable as a judgment, unless the court rules that it is not. In an appropriate case failure to pay an ordered sanction is punishable as a contempt. And failure to provide the underlying discovery, in violation of a court order that it be provided, is punishable by sanctions affecting the conduct of the litigation, up to and including a terminating sanction. Because of that, an order terminating a plaintiff’s lawsuit or striking a defendant’s answer and entering its default (in effect, terminating sanctions) solely because of failure to pay the monetary sanction is excessive.

Such an order was made against the petitioner in this case. The circumstances warrant our direction to the trial court, by writ of mandate, to set aside the improper order and the resulting default judgment.

Factual and Procedural Summary

The underlying lawsuit was brought by real parties in interest Jim Y. and…