Three years after his previous legislative attempt fizzled, state Sen. Tom Umberg, D-Santa Ana, will try once more to pass a package of reforms aimed at improving the discovery process.
The chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee has introduced SB 235, which would boost from $250 to $1,000 mandatory sanctions on lawyers who stall production of documents or fail to confer with the opposing party about the requested records. The bill would also eliminate the rebuttable presumption that individuals acted in good faith if they were not represented by an attorney at the time of their alleged discovery misdeeds.
