1/2 DCA Does Express Great Frustration With Respect To Both Sides For Acrimonious Litigation Stemming From A $21,000 Judgment.
Based on blogging for a number of years and reading thousands of California intermediary appellate opinions (published and unpublished), we can safely say that appellate courts, like trial judges, grow weary of litigants who are “repeat customers” for numerous times in the same case where review is sought for discretionary decisions. Karnazes v. Hartford, Case No. A145672 (1st Dist., Div. 2 July 31, 2019) (unpublished) is such a situation, although the appellate court also expressed even more frustration as to the litigants’ behavior in a case where the register of action was 148 pages long and evolved from a $21,000 initial judgment.
The lower court ruled on judgment creditor’s request for postjudgment collection attorney’s fees of $157,418, awarding only $30,000—one fifth of the request. Judgment debtor appealed, despite the deferential abuse of discretion standard applying to the issue of the reasonableness of the fee award. (Harman v. City and County of San Francisco, 158 Cal.App.4th 545, 556 (2007) [“our review of the award is severely constrained”].) The 1/2 DCA affirmed, but the panel expressed extreme frustration with the behavior of the parties which stretched back a long time over a mere $21,000 original judgment.
The panel noted that appellant’s “[i]nvective is not a substitute for reasoning” because “her generalized—and generic—arguments do not satisfy the strict standard for abuse of discretion governing fee awards.” It also chastised appellant for her indiscriminate and unjustified attacks on the integrity of the San Mateo Superior Court. Then, the focus shifted to Judgment creditor, who was criticized in this opinion for oppressive past judgment collection efforts and filing 204 pages of moving papers for a motion only involving nine-months work—concluding this way, “It is all hard to fathom.”
Although affirming the fee award, the appellate court directed that the parties had to bear their respective costs on appeal.