$239,649.87 Fee Award Sustained on Appeal in Civil Rights Case.
Defendants were found by jurors to have inflicted emotional distress on plaintiff, and one defendant was found to have violated the Ralph Civil Rights Act of 1976 (Civ. Code, § 51.7) by committing/threatening violence based on plaintiff’s gender. Because the Ralph Civil Rights Act has a fee-shifting provision, plaintiff sought to recover fees of $251,136.84. The lower court awarded plaintiff fees of $239,649.84, excluding time on some abandoned and unsuccessful work on certain activities.
In Hern v. McEllen, Case No. A125358 (1st Dist., Div. 5 May 27, 2011) (unpublished), losing defendant in the fee proceeding suggested that the award had to be reversed because the lower court failed to apportion out time on another unsuccessful claim.
This one lost. Although apportionment of compensable versus noncompensable time can be done in the trial court’s discretion, it does not have to be done where the work is found to be interrelated on the two claims or the facts were “inextricably intertwined.” That was the case here between the two claims, such that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in failing to make any further allocation–its decision was not “clearly wrong.”
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