Beware the Pitfalls in Calculating California State Court Deadlines

• Publication year: 2018
• Author: By Julie Goren

Beware the Pitfalls in Calculating California State Court Deadlines

By Julie Goren

Julie Goren is the author and publisher of Litigation By The Numbers®, the essential California civil litigation handbook revised twice yearly, California Civil Litigation and Discovery, its substantive companion, numerous articles, and a one-hour step-by-step calendaring video, "Calendaring in California State Court: Steps and Traps for the Unwary." Formerly with the L.A. offices of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, and Buchalter, Nemer, Fields & Younger, Julie left the practice in 2003 to devote her time to writing, publishing, and teaching. She can be reached through her website, www.litigationbythenumbers.com.

There's an old saying - "we learn from our mistakes." That's decidedly not how you or your staff should learn the many pitfalls and hidden traps inherent in calculating California state court deadlines. Instead, you can save a lot of time, and even avoid malpractice, by learning from other people's mistakes.

THE RULES AND CONSEQUENCES

In California litigation, the Rules of Court and Code of Civil Procedure work in tandem to set out key deadlines for all stages of a case. Meeting these deadlines is critical. Parties can be precluded from asserting defenses, making counterclaims, serving discovery, or even responding to discovery, if dates are missed. Missing a key date can mean easily provable malpractice.

With the rules being clearly articulated and the consequences of making mistakes being high, it is imperative that practicing attorneys understand how the rules operate.

COUNTING FORWARD AND COUNTING BACKWARD

Under the applicable rules, some deadlines in litigation are calculated by counting back from a date certain. For instance, if you are making a motion, you begin with a hearing date and serve motion papers a certain number of days before the hearing date. Same with oppositions to motions and replies in support.

Other deadlines are calculated by counting forward from a date certain.

It is important to know which type of deadline you are calculating when you first set out to find your key dates, as different rules apply to each method. For example, applying to motion-related calendaring a set of rules applicable only to forward-counted dates can be fatal.

PRACTICING DEADLINE CALCULATION

In this article, we're going to calendar two response due dates where something must be done within a specified timeframe after an event, i.e., we are counting forward.

In our first calendaring exercise, written interrogatories are hand-delivered on February 28, 2019. In the second, written interrogatories are mailed on February 28, 2019, to a service address within California. If you have experience calendaring deadlines, you may be able to calculate the two response due dates in the next minute on your own. You may have already finished!

For our purposes, unlike real life, the answers are not nearly as important as the procedure. I urge you to focus on the many steps involved in calculating a deadline. There are steps you're taking without even realizing it; steps your staff may be missing. It's even more important to become aware of the myriad errors that can be made in the process of calculating these or other deadlines. You might be making them yourself. Your staff might be making them. If you are new to this, go slow and take heed of the steps and traps. You will benefit most from learning how to do this correctly from the outset.

Now, please grab a 2019 calendar (I suggest a hard copy, so you can check off days as you count), and let's get started.

[Page 17]

Step 1: Identify the triggering event

The first step is to recognize that an event has occurred that has triggered one or more deadlines, i.e., there is something to calendar. I've done that step for you by giving you the exercises, but, in every day practice, it's not as easy, particularly for the novice. If the triggering event is not recognized, nothing will be calendared. While there are ways to learn to recognize triggering events and there are tools which alert you to them, you should look for a triggering event any time a document is served on you, by you, filed with the court, or received from the court.

Step 2: Identify the deadlines triggered

The second step is to identify the deadline(s) that have been triggered by that event. In our case, the service of interrogatories triggers a single deadline clearly related to the triggering event -- the response due date. But it is often not so simple.

What to Watch Out for:

• Multiple unrelated deadlines. An event may trigger multiple deadlines which bear no logical relation to the event. The filing of a complaint is a perfect example. In addition to triggering the obvious deadline to serve the complaint, it triggers deadlines relating to challenging the judge assigned to the case, the case management conference, motions for summary judgment, and trial.
• New deadlines. New deadlines are added from time to time. For example, on January 1, 2016, and January 1, 2018, statutes creating new meet and confer deadlines went into effect. The service of a complaint has since triggered those...