Implications On Fee Motions Provide First Ground Underlying Request.
On April 19, 2015, we posted on County of Los Angeles Board of Supervisors v. Superior Court (ACLU), 235 Cal.App.4th 1154 (2015), which held that attorney billing records were privileged and immune from discovery under a Government Code exemption. We did observe that this would have an interesting fallout as far as what type of documentation will be submitted in connection with fee petitions, given that many California state court decisions (both published and unpublished) extol the virtues of presenting detailed fee substantiation. Recently, the Los Angeles County Bar Association (LACBA) filed a letter with the California Supreme Court seeking depublication or a review grant of this decision, raising the argument that the holding would immunize fee requests from reasonableness scrutiny if complete billing could be shielded under the attorney-client privilege. The letter states, “[T]he California Court of Appeal held that attorney billing records, once sent to a client, are categorically protected by the attorney-client privilege, even after confidential information has been redacted.” The letter continues, “[T]he Court of Appeal’s decision deprives the trial court and counsel of access to the most probative evidence of whether attorney fees claimed are unreasonable when the client declines to waive the privilege. The legal analysis underlying the Court of Appeal’s holding, moreover, is at best incomplete.” Here is a link to the letter.
HAT TIP—We give a “HAT TIP” to Keith Turner, the lead attorney for the Turner Law Firm, which won a significant reversal of an attorney’s fees denial by the California Supreme Court earlier in Tract 19051 Homeowners Ass’n v. Kemp, 60 Cal.4th 1135 (2015), for brining this letter to our attention.