Steve Pappas, who lost to Doreen Farr in his quest for Santa Barbara’s 3rd District Supervisorial seat by a slim number of votes, was hit with attorney’s fees of around $525,000 (after factoring in an arithmetic error) for losing a case against her. Now, Mr. Pappas is appealing the amount of the award to the Second District, Division 6 Court of Appeal. Earlier, as we reported in our December 22, 2010 post, the same appellate court reversed a lower court’s refusal to award fees against Mr. Pappas under the private attorney general statute, which led to the substantial lower court award now being appealed.
Ms. Farr, thus far, was reported by Chris Meagher in a November 2, 2011 Santa Barbara Independent article to have paid about $228,600 in fees to two attorneys from her campaign fund, apparently much of this going to defend the suit. Expensive, expensive, which again reinforces our mantra that you have to think carefully when bringing a suit as an individual if there is fee-shifting exposure–especially when it involves a non-section 1717 fee shifting where you cannot even buy insurance protection like that provided by Sonoma Risk for 1717 fee exposure.