Increasing Amount Of Appellate Bond Did Not Involve Judgment Satisfaction Issue.
The First District, Division 2 had to issue four opinions in what it described as “apparently interminable litigation” between property developers and rescinding purchasers of a residential property. With respect to a topic of interest to readers of our blog, Hogan v. DeAngelis Construction, Inc., Case No. A143637 (1st Dist., Div. 2 Jan. 13, 2016) (unpublished) involved a trial judge’s denial of attorney’s fees for developers’ appellate fees in a case where developers successfully resisted purchasers’ motion to increase the amount of the appellate bond. Developers primarily had sought fees under the fee-shifting judgment satisfaction statute and a section of California’s undertaking/bonding statutory scheme.
The appellate court affirmed the fee denial.
The problem here was that developers could not identify a proper statutory basis for fees. The judgment satisfaction scheme (CCP § 724.040) did not work because there was a “disconnect” and no relationship to the motion to increase the appellate bond—put another way, a different animal is involved with conditional satisfaction requests and bond increase requests. With respect to developers’ reliance on CCP § 996.030 (allowing a trial judge to determine a reduction to a bond), nothing in this section addresses recovery of fees at all, much less recovery of appellate fees.