California Meet-and-Confer Declarations (CCP § 2016.040)

California state practice handles conferral differently from the federal rules. The obligation attaches to specific motions by statute, and what you file is a declaration rather than a certification.

The standard

Code of Civil Procedure § 2016.040 sets it out:

A meet and confer declaration in support of a motion shall state facts showing a reasonable and good faith attempt at an informal resolution of each issue presented by the motion.

Two phrases carry the weight.

“State facts showing.” Not a conclusion. A declaration that says counsel met and conferred in good faith, without saying when, with whom, about what, and with what result, does not satisfy the section.

“Each issue presented by the motion.” Item by item. A global conferral about a discovery set does not support a motion directed at particular interrogatories or requests. If your motion addresses twelve requests, the declaration should show an attempt at all twelve — and if it doesn’t, expect the motion to be limited to the ones it covers.

Which motions require one

The Civil Discovery Act attaches the requirement to the principal motions to compel further responses — including those directed at interrogatories, inspection demands and requests for admission — and to a number of related motions. Depositions have their own provisions; a motion to compel deposition answers, for example, carries its own meet-and-confer requirement.

The safest practice is to check the specific statute governing the motion you are bringing rather than relying on a general rule, because the Act is provision-by-provision and the triggers are not uniform. Local rules and departmental standing orders can add requirements, including informal discovery conference procedures that must be exhausted first.

Sanctions

Section 2023.010 defines misuses of the discovery process, and they include failing to confer in good faith in an attempt to resolve a dispute informally. That cuts both ways: a party that stonewalls conferral is exposed, and so is a movant who filed without a genuine attempt. Courts have denied motions and imposed sanctions on both.

The practical consequence is that the declaration is doing double duty — it supports your motion and it defends you against the other side’s sanctions request.

Drafting the declaration

Make it chronological and specific:

1. Identify the discovery at issue by set and number.
2. Recite each communication — date, medium, participants. Attach the correspondence as exhibits.
3. For each disputed item, state what you sought, what you proposed by way of compromise, and what the responding party said.
4. Show the narrowing. Where issues resolved, say so and say which. A declaration showing that conferral resolved eight of twelve items is far more persuasive on the remaining four than one showing no movement at all.
5. State the impasse. What remains, and why further conferral would not resolve it.

The single most common defect is a declaration that describes the conferral in aggregate. “The parties exchanged correspondence and conferred by telephone on three occasions” is a summary, not facts showing an attempt at each issue.

Keeping the record while you confer

The reason declarations come out thin is rarely that the attempt was thin. It is that the attempt happened across letters, emails and calls over several weeks, and the per-issue state of play has to be reconstructed from that pile at drafting time, under deadline. Anything that did not make it into a document gets characterised from memory.

Running the conferral item by item — each request with its own proposal, response and timestamp — inverts that. The declaration is then a description of a record rather than a reconstruction of one, with the resolved items and the deadlocked ones already separated.

That is what AsyncConfer produces: an attributed, timestamped conferral log, hash-chained and exportable, generated as a by-product of doing the conferral rather than assembled afterwards. For the federal analogue, see the Rule 37(a)(1) certification.

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Related guides

• The Rule 37(a)(1) Good-Faith Certification
• Meet-and-Confer Letter: Structure and Template
• Can You Meet and Confer by Email?