A bitter, convoluted battle over the $25 million estate and 3,800-acre ranch of Joe Carrari — the outspoken, pioneering wine grape cultivator from Los Alamos who died in November 2018 — came to a shuddering conclusion this week when Judge Colleen Sterne ruled that Angelina Dettamanti, named as Carrari’s sole heir in his last amended will, had so flagrantly abused the discovery process over the last 23 months that she forfeited the right to have her case tried.
Technically, Judge Sterne imposed “terminating sanctions,” meaning Dettamanti’s voluminous legal filings are to be stricken from the record and that the litigants on the other side — led by Linda Kopcrak, one of the three surviving Carrari children named as heirs in their father’s prior wills — would prevail by default. Since Kopcrak is charging Dettamanti exerted “undue influence” on her elderly father — isolating and alienating him from family, friends, and longtime medical and legal advisors — this ruling effectively expunges Dettamanti’s claim as sole heir to a vast landholding outside Los Alamos in the Santa Ynez Valley and an estate valued several years ago at $25 million.
Such sanctions are both extreme and extremely rare. In so ruling, Judge Sterne stated, “Dettamanti has gone to tremendous lengths first to avoid the taking of her deposition at all and subsequently to avoid providing any meaningful testimony during any deposition session.… She has fundamentally refused to cooperate with discovery in this action, in a deliberate effort to deprive Kopcrak of the discovery needed to go to trial. She has been provided opportunity after opportunity after opportunity to avoid terminating sanctions, only to engage in further obstruction and delay tactics.”