Estate of Ambrose-Gordon CA1/5

BACKGROUND

After Lennice Katherine Ambrose-Gordon died, her widower, Robert L. Gordon, filed a spousal property petition.

1 Further statutory references are to the Code of Civil

Procedure.

1 Gordon and Chandler, Ambrose-Gordon’s daughter, then filed dueling petitions to administer her estate. The trial court consolidated the matters and scheduled a hearing for May 12, 2023.

Chandler served requests for production of documents, interrogatories, and requests for admission. Beginning on April 12, 2023, her counsel Peter Singler (in his words) sent three emails “reminding [Gordon’s counsel] of the upcoming deadlines [to respond to the discovery] and stating [Singler] could not grant any extensions due to the pending hearing date.” Nevertheless, the parties agreed to extend the deadline for discovery responses and to continue the scheduled hearing to July 14, 2023.

Gordon served discovery responses and produced over 900 pages of documents. The responses were verified by Gordon and signed by his counsel Anthony Bentivegna. After reviewing them, Singler “tried calling” Gordon’s lead counsel Roy Johnston and emailed him at nearly 4:00 p.m. on a Friday, stating he was “disappointed”…