Trial Court Properly Rejected Comparison of Selective Tasks of Opposing Counsel in Gauging Reasonableness of Claimant’s Fee Request.
Here is an interesting one where years and years of litigation may have come to a close in Vasquez v. State of California, Case No. D056598 (4th Dist., Div. 1 Oct. 19, 2011) (unpublished), resolving in the process some deadline and other issues relating to the lower court’s award of substantial attorney’s fees to the successful plaintiff for appellate work under Code of Civil Procedure section 1021.5.
Vasquez was a long-running taxpayer waste action pertaining to Proposition 139, the Prison Inmate Labor Initiative of 1990. This appeal involved the State of California’s challenges to additional appellate fees awarded to plaintiff after she obtained a reversal of a demurrer, a stipulated injunction (getting fees of $1,257,258.60 for initial work that was affirmed in a prior appellate decision), and two follow-up hearings to make sure the injunction was obeyed (resulting in an award of $549,393.36 in fees that was also affirmed in a prior appellate decision). Later still, the California Supreme Court accepted review and decided in favor of plaintiff on whether settlement attempts had to be made prior to filing in order to justify a fee award under a catalyst theory. Plaintiff then sought substantial fees for intermediate appellate and supreme court work, with the lower court ultimately awarding her attorney’s fees of about $1,235,000, representing about a 59% reduction from the requested fees. Then, the lower court also awarded plaintiff another $78,578.50 in fees for litigating the “fees on fees” issue (briefing and litigating the fee applications themselves).
The Fourth District, Division 1 affirmed the fee orders.
Although the trial court did allow a fee application to be filed after expiration of the deadline for filing it, this was allowable for “good cause”–something demonstrated because the application was deferred pending settlement negotiations that were unsuccessful. (Cal. Rules of Court, rule 3.1702(d).) The time limitation for a cost bill, also, is not jurisdictional so that a trial court has broad discretion in allowing relief from a late filing where there is no prejudice to the the other side, with the settlement exploration activities showing the absence of prejudice. (Hoover Community Hotel Development Corp. v. Thomson, 168 Cal.App.3d 485, 488 (1985); Ron Burns Constr. Co., Inc. v. Moore, 184 Cal.App.4th 1406, 1416 (2010).)
The appellate court next explored an issue in which there is no consensus at the state court level: are opposing counsel’s fees or work probative in determining the reasonableness of a claimant’s fees? Here, the answer was “no,” but a narrow “no.” The reason was that only a few selective opposing counsel tasks were used, with the lower court determining that this type of myopic approach was not probative.