WILSON v. BROWN Part-I
Under Code of Civil Procedure section 2033.420, a party who unreasonably denies a request for admission may be required to pay the requesting party its reasonable expenses (including reasonable attorney's fees) incurred in proving the truth of the matter at trial. In this case, a will contestant, Nancy Brown, denied requests for admission which, if admitted, would have resolved the entire case in favor of the executor, Terri Wilson. When Wilson then prevailed at trial, she sought an award of costs of proof in the amount of all of her legal fees incurred after the date of the denial of the requests for admission. The trial court granted the motion, ordering Brown, and her counsel, Attorney Larry Lewellyn and Attorney Dawn Clark-Johnson, to pay Wilson the full amount of her legal fees.
In this appeal, we consider whether a costs of proof order may be directed to the denying party's counsel, as well as the denying party. We conclude that costs of proof may be imposed only against a party, not the party's counsel. We therefore reverse that portion of the trial court's order requiring Brown's attorneys to pay a share of the costs of proof in this case. In the unpublished portion of this opinion, we consider whether the trial court properly awarded costs of proof with respect to requests for admission pertaining to every theory on which Brown challenged the will, and, therefore, whether the trial court properly calculated the costs of proof as Wilson's entire attorney fee bill. Court conclude that the trial court abused its discretion, and remand for a recalculation of the costs of proof pertaining only to those requests for admission for which Brown lacked a reasonable ground to believe that she would prevail at trial.
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