Third District Reverses Denial of Fee to Prevailing Party.
Ghandour v. Tahoe Sands Time Share Owners Association, Case No. C056395 (3d Dist. July 1, 2010) (unpublished) involved a trial court’s grant of a permanent injunction to plaintiff as against a defendant time share owners association, with the injunction prohibiting association from blocking her vehicular use of two access easements, interfering with her parking on the easement closest to her house, and constructing buildings that would interfere with the easement on which her house stands. However, the lower court refused to grant fees to plaintiff as a prevailing party (despite the existence of a fees clause in operative trust agreement creating the easements), ruling that the operative trust agreement was only used as “defensive” evidence and was not the crux of the dispute. (Plaintiff requested a fee award of $243,872.40.)
On appeal, the fee award denial was reversed.
The dueling complaints by the parties did involve the trust agreement containing both easement and attorney’s fees provisions. The “defensive” evidence basis of the lower court ruling could not be sustained; after all, plaintiff would still be entitled to fees under Civil Code section 1717 for successfully defending on association’s contract-based claims.
Association argued that, because plaintiff was a nonsignatory (but subject to the terms of the trust agreement as a later time share owner through a complicated set of circumstances), she was not entitled to fees. Not so, said the appellate panel. Plaintiff defended rights arising under the trust agreement containing the fee-shifting provision, sufficient in and of itself. Plaintiff held fee title to a property that entitled her to the easements at issue in the case, more than enough for standing requirements.
Reversed and remanded for a fee award determination in favor of plaintiff.