Denying requests for admissions (RFAs) vs. failing to answer them altogether: What are the consequences?

DEEMED ADMISSIONS CAN BE USED AS EVIDENCE 

BUT NOT EXPRESS DENIALS OF REQUESTED ADMISSIONS 

In Medina v. Zuniga, the Texas Supreme Court recently reversed sanctions imposed on a defendant for having failed to admit matters addressing liability in response to spate of requests for admissions (RFAs) served at the inception of the law suit, where the defendant later stipulated to having been at fault, and only contested gross negligence at trial.* The case is a fact-intensive personal injury case arising from a vehicle-pedestrian collision and has nothing to do with debt collection.

* See TEX. CIV. PRAC. & REM. CODE § 41.001(11) (defining gross negligence as an act or omission that (1) objectively “involves an extreme degree of risk” and (2) the actor proceeds to perform “with conscious indifference” despite an “actual, subjective awareness of the risk”).

"REQUESTS FOR ADMISSIONS ARE NO METHOD FOR TRYING THE MERITS"

Medina v. Zuniga, No. 17-0498 (Tex. Apr. 26, 2019)
(sanctions for failure to admit requests for admissions reversed) 

That said, REQUESTS FOR ADMISSIONS are routinely served on defendants in consumer debt collection cases by certain debt collection attorneys for certain creditors, and they are designed to be merit-preclusive if they are not denied, meaning that the creditor can then rely on deemed admission to get a judgment.

DENY, DENY, DENY 

The received wisdom among consumer debt defense attorneys is that RFAs can be safely denied as a routine defensive litigation practice, lest they be used as substitutes for evidence supporting the debt claim.

The Texas Supreme Court's opinion in Medina v. Zuniga supports the proposition that an arguably insincere denial does not amount to sanctionable conduct because a defendant should be able to hold the plaintiff to its burden of proof, and should not be forced to either concede liability (by answering "Admitted" to RFAs that go to the merits) or face risk sanctions for answering "Denied".

Note that the Texas Supreme Court's most recent holding on the matter is also in line with rule 92 of the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure, which authorizes a blanket "general denial" rather than requiring a defendant to set forth a response denying or admitting each allegation in the plaintiff's petition one by one. (Some affirmative defenses, however, require a verified denial, and some conditions precedent, if applicable, require a specific denial, rather than merely an all-purpose general one). 

DEEMED ADMISSIONS 

The problem with ignoring requests for admissions, by contrast, is a more serious one. If RFAs are not answered, the propositions requested to be admitted are deemed true without any need for other proof. If a battery of deemed admissions covers the essential elements of the plaintiff's claims, they relieve the plaintiff of the burden to prove the claim with competent evidence on the merits. In many debt collection cases, courts have upheld summary judgments granted based entirely, or in part, on deemed admissions, even on issues such as standing to sue and amount of attorney's fees sought by the creditor's attorney.

BEWARE OF RFAs SERVED TOGETHER WITH SUIT PAPERS, OR EMBEDDED IN THE PETITION 

Some collection law firms routinely serve a REQUEST FOR ADMISSIONS together with the CITATION and the ORIGINAL PETITION, and then rely on the executed RETURN OF CITATION (or alternative proof of service, such as a sworn declaration by a private process server) to establish that the RFAs were served on the same date the citation was served, and that the requests are deemed admitted because they went unanswered within the 50 days that followed.

This practice can create a problem for defendants even in cases where the defendant promptly hires an attorney to answer the freshly-filed collection lawsuit in response to a debt-defense attorney's solicitation letter.

If the suit papers (citation, petition, and requests for admission, which are sometimes included in the petition itself rather than appearing on a separate document) are still in the hands of the process server, it is possible that the defendant may get served in person after her attorney has already filed an original answer. The defendant may end up ignoring the requests for admission, trusting the attorney to take care of everything. But the attorney will then likely fail to answer (deny) the RFAs by the due date if his office is unaware that the client has been served with requests for admissions in the interim, together with the citation. The Defendant's answer to the law suit will preclude a default judgment, but the creditor could still use deemed admissions to support a motion for summary judgment, or raise the matter of deemed admissions at trial.

All may not be lost, because the attorney can still file a MOTION TO STRIKE DEEMED ADMISSIONS (sometimes called a motion to un-deem), but there is no guarantee that the trial court will grant it. And a deemed admissions problem must, of course, be detected in time to take proper remedial action. When deemed admissions are brought up at trial, it may be too late.

More on requests for admissions and deemed admissions:
 -->  Dealing with a deemed admissions problem in a  consumer debt collection case |  Labeau v. GE Capital Retail Bank: Deemed admissions used against bank customer | Disputing the existence of deemed admissions |