Pro Se Plaintiff Asks For Expenses For A Pizza Party As Discovery Sanction, Gets Them
The request may be a little cheesy, but...
The details of the pro se case of Chattopadhyay v. Rowell et al. in Superior Court in San Francisco aren’t all that important. What’s important is Chattopadhyay posed interrogatories and Rowell failed, in part, to respond in good faith. When Chattopadhyay moved to compel, she included the following request for sanctions:
As a result of defendant Rowell’s failure to meet and confer, his meritless objections and other abuses of the discovery process, I estimate that I have incurred and will necessarily incur the following reasonable expense:
* $82.00 for printing and photocopying the moving papers,
* $45.00 for transportation to and from court,
* $6.50 for printing meet and confer correspondence for archival purposes,
* $50.00 for research-related expenses,
* $31.19 for a large cheese pizza and breadsticks to get one of my friends Erika Dale, to proofread the moving papers for me,
* $10.99 for e-filing.
Working meals aren’t wholly unprecedented expenses in litigation — many a high-stakes trial team spends an evening at Chuck E. Cheese’s reviewing depositions — so asking the court to make an out-of-line litigant to pay up isn’t as crazy as it may seem at first blush. But who needs a pizza and breadsticks to proofread for a friend? Come on Erika, help a girl out for free!
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Chattopadhyay’s requests added up to $225.68 (plus an additional $60 she requested for the court itself to cover filing fees that it waived). Judge pro tempore Paul Renne awarded Chattopadhyay a smooth $250.00.
So, Erika, there’s an extra $24.32 there if you’d just skip the damn breadsticks this time.
(Chattopadhyay’s full breakdown of expenses on the next page…)
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Joe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.
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