The California Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a $2.5 million discovery sanction against Los Angeles in a case involving a botched utility billing system and a lawsuit contrived to limit the city’s losses.

In a unanimous ruling, the high court held that judges have broad, but not limitless, authority to punish egregious discovery misconduct. The Civil Discovery Act must be read as a whole, and trial court judges do not have to find a “method-specific” violation specifically listed in the statute to impose sanctions, the justices said.