Reported / Citable
Background
About 50 years ago, four Jogani brothers (Haresh, Shailesh, Rajesh, and Chetan) orally agreed to partner in a global diamond business. In 1995, they orally agreed to bring in a fifth brother, Shashikant (‘Shashi’) Jogani, to invest in and grow Shashi’s existing real estate portfolio, forming a separate real-estate partnership. Years later, Haresh denied that either partnership existed and claimed all assets were his alone.
Shashi sued in 2003 for his rightful share of the real-estate partnership. Rajesh and Chetan later cross-complained for their shares of both partnerships. After a five-month jury trial in 2024, the jury returned verdicts in favor of Shashi, Rajesh, and Chetan. The court entered judgment with declaratory relief (each brother’s partnership share), compensatory and punitive damages, and prejudgment interest totaling approximately $6.85 billion against Haresh and the partnership entities.
The defendants appealed seven discrete issues, mostly evidentiary. They challenged rulings on (1) sanctions for failure to produce records, (2) hearsay testimony from third-party witnesses, (3) Gujarati-to-English translations of recorded meetings, (4) testimony from an attorney who formerly jointly represented Shashi and Haresh, (5) an undisclosed expert opinion on lost profits, (6) a special jury instruction on the statute of limitations, and (7) refusal to give an offset instruction.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeal rejected six of the seven challenges. It found no error in the discovery sanctions, the third-party-witness hearsay rulings, the admission of the Gujarati translations, the testimony from the formerly-jointly-representing attorney, the special instruction on the statute of limitations for the cross-claims, or the refusal to give an offset instruction.
The court agreed with one challenge: Shashi’s damages expert testified to an opinion not disclosed before trial — that real-estate-partnership investments sold at a loss in 2008 would have appreciated to $1.98 billion if Haresh had not ‘panicked’ and sold them at a $445 million loss. That undisclosed-opinion testimony violated California’s expert-disclosure rules and should have been excluded. The court conditionally affirmed the judgment but ordered a remittitur to remove the lost-profits component tied to the undisclosed expert opinion.
Key Takeaways
- Expert opinions not disclosed before trial under Code of Civil Procedure section 2034.260 are inadmissible at trial.
- Discovery sanctions for document-production failures will be upheld where the trial court acted within its discretion and the failure was meaningful.
- Hearsay testimony from third-party witnesses, foreign-language translations of recorded meetings, and testimony from a formerly-jointly-representing attorney can all be admissible under the right circumstances.
- Conditional affirmance with remittitur is the appropriate remedy when one component of a large verdict rests on improperly admitted evidence.
- Family-business partnership disputes — even those tracing back decades — can produce massive damages awards that survive most evidentiary attacks if the trial court manages the proceedings carefully.
Why It Matters
This is one of the largest published California verdicts of recent years. The conditional affirmance is significant for high-stakes business and partnership litigation. The Second District has provided important guidance on numerous evidentiary issues that arise in long, complex commercial trials — including how courts handle multilingual recordings, jointly-represented attorneys’ subsequent testimony, and discovery sanctions in cases involving sophisticated business defendants.
For trial counsel handling complex commercial litigation, the case provides multiple useful precedents on routine evidentiary issues, plus a sharp reminder that expert disclosures must be complete and timely. Failure to disclose a major component of an expert’s opinion will produce remittitur even after a successful verdict. For litigants in family-business partnership disputes, the decision underscores that California courts will enforce oral partnership agreements decades after formation, given sufficient supporting evidence — and that punitive damages and prejudgment interest can dramatically expand the financial exposure of family members who deny the partnership.