Discovery sanctions; Vicencio v Ramirez

While the court held that the trial court abused its discretion by denying defendant-State Farm’s motion to dismiss without a proper legal analysis, it declined State Farm’s invitation to decide what particular sanction was appropriate. The court vacated the trial court’s order denying State Farm’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit brought by plaintiff-Darling for failure to comply with a discovery order and remanded for the trial court to fashion an appropriate remedy for Darling’s conduct. It retained jurisdiction. State Farm argued that the trial court abused its discretion and ignored the court’s directives in a prior remand order by denying the motion to dismiss. The trial court “denied State Farm’s motion to dismiss because Darling ‘complied with extensive discovery.’” State Farm argued that “the trial court abused its discretion by doing so because dismissal with prejudice was the only principled sanction for Darling’s willful noncompliance with court orders. When deciding whether to dismiss a case for a discovery violation, the trial court should consider the” nonexhaustive factors in Vicencio. In this case, the “trial court gave virtually no analysis justifying its order denying State Farm’s motion to dismiss. The trial court certainly did not ‘carefully evaluate all available options on the record’ or explain why the Vicencio factors did not support the requested sanctions.” The court held that by “failing to employ the proper legal analysis, the trial court necessarily abused its discretion.”