When calculating time for service of discovery in relation to discovery cutoff in CA, two thing must be taken into consideration.
1. The deadline to serve discovery when counting backwards from discovery cutoff.
2. The deadline to respond to discovery, with reasonable time for such response counting forwards from the date the discovery request is served.
This creates a conundrum when trying to accurately calculate service dates for discovery. When counting backwards from discovery cutoff, the deadline to serve discovery may roll off of a holiday or weekend. Further, additional days provided per method of service may cause the service deadline to possibly roll again. One needs to be aware that the required service date for any given method of service of discovery could fall on a different date than anticipated for service based solely on 30 days.
Once a service deadline for discovery has been calculated based on the Discovery Cutoff date, one must then check whether the reasonable time to respond will be allotted when serving discovery on that date. The reasonable time for response is calculated by counting forward from the date discovery was served and has the same phenomenon of rolling off weekends and holidays with additional time added for method of service. The presence of rolling rules for weekends and holidays and court days, which vary depending on if one is counting backwards or forwards in regards to the possibility of falling on a weekend/holiday, is what creates the ultimate issue when calculating these deadlines. For example, when counting forwards if a deadline lands on a Sunday it will naturally roll forward to Monday only skipping one day, when counting backwards the deadline may roll off a weekend paired with subsequent or precedent holidays increasing the amount of days rolled and disrupting uniformity in the calculation.
To accommodate this nuance, LTB recommends users first calculate the discovery cutoff date (either by order, or based on trial) and then notate the deadline listed for serving discovery based on their intended method of service. This calculates the deadline to serve discovery counting backwards from the discovery cut-off date. This notated date should then be input into the "**DISCOVERY- Date interrogatories, RFA, RFP served" repeat calculator with the intended method of service to calculate the deadline for a reasonable response. This calculates the deadlines for reasonable time to respond by counting forwards.
The dates should then be compared to ensure the deadline to respond to such discovery does not violate discovery cut-off and should be adjusted as needed.