California Appellate Tracker

Padron v. Watchtower Bible & Tract Society of New York, Inc.

December 4, 2017

Judicial estoppel forbids a defendant from asserting that a court lacked authority to impose monetary sanctions when, in an earlier suit, the defendant successfully argued that the court should have entered monetary sanctions rather than terminating sanctions.

In a follow-on case to Lopez v. Watchtower Bible & Tract Society of New York, Inc. (2016) 246 Cal.App.4th 566, defendant again refused to produce records that the trial court ordered it to produce. The trial court then imposed a $4,000 per day sanction for each day defendant failed to search for and failed to produce the ordered documents. This opinion holds that defendant is judicially estopped from denying that the trial court had the power to impose these monetary sanctions since defendant had argued in Lopez that the trial court should entered a substantial monetary sanction instead of terminating sanctions. The opinion also determines that in any event the trial court had discretion to enter such a monetary sanction to cure defendant’s obstinate refusal to obey the court’s discovery orders.

California Court of Appeal, Fourth District Court of Appeal, Division One (Huffman, J.); November 9, 2017; 2017 WL 5181618.

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Padron v. Watchtower Bible & Tract Society of New York, Inc.

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