Second District, Division 5 Rules on Applicability of Grant v. List & Lathrop.
In Silver v. Pacific American Fish Co., Inc., Case No. B214450 (2d Dist., Div. 5 Nov. 30, 2010) (certified for partial publication, on the fee issue), the appellate court confronted whether a cross-complainant correctly appealed a postjudgment order awarding fees to Pacific where the appeal was made from a fee ruling prior to the hearing on the actual fee motion. Under these circumstances, the appeal was untimely and did not encompass the later ruling, which was never appealed from subsequently. (First American Title Co. v. Mirzaian, 108 Cal.App.4th 956, 960 (2003).)
This case really had the appellate court confronting the applicability of Grant v. List & Lathrop, 2 Cal.App.4th 993, 998 (1992). The Court of Appeal found Grant less applicable than Norman I. Krug Real Estate Investments, Inc. v. Braszker, 220 Cal.App.3d 35 (1990), where both entitlement and amount of fees were at issue and an appeal was found untimely. Because entitlement was also at issue in the premature appeal here, it would have vitiated the “separate appealability” rule generally applied to fee awards if Grant was extended outside the fee amount context.