Second District Illustrates the “No POOF!” Rule.
If you have followed our blog, you know about our “POOF” rule. This is the principle by which a fee award will generally go POOF! (goes away) when there is a material reversal of a merits award that was the predicate for the fee award.
Now, ta! da!, we introduce the “no POOF!” rule.
The Second District, Division 6 is our victim on this one. The decision that happens to be the victim is Citizens Planning Assn. v. City of Santa Barbara, Case No. B216006 (2d Dist., Div. 6 Jan. 25, 2011) (certified for publication).
There, the appellate court affirmed a merits judgment which also produced a private attorney general fee award of $175,888. The appellant did not challenge the fee award, except to argue that it would go POOF! if the merits judgment was reversed. Well, that did not happen. So, no POOF! The fee award stood based on the absence of any other arguments.
We thank Justice Coffee and his colleagues for helping us set forth the no POOF! rule as a corollary to our POOF! category.