Unanswered But Improperly Served Requests for Admission Not Deemed Admitted
October 24, 2014Graham Mortgage sued Holmes on a personal guaranty he had signed. The trial court granted Graham’s motion for summary judgment, and Holmes appealed. Among other things, he argued that the trial court had erred by refusing to deem his requests for admission admitted because Graham never responded to them. Graham argued that it had no obligation to respond to the requests for admission because they were served by email and the rules (at the time) did not allow service by email. The Court of Appeals agreed, holding that even though Graham had received the requests for admission, its internal procedures were not structured to receive discovery requests by email, and “attorneys should be able to structure their internal procedures around their opponents’ compliance with the rules of civil procedure in such matters as service of documents.”
