Plaintiff Only Won $55,000 Jury Verdict Plus $18,000 in Costs.
Although awards to winning plaintiffs under the California Fair Employment and Housing Act are encouraged, they must be reasonable in amount. Otherwise, the trial court has broad discretion to deny them in entirety or substantially chop them down from their higher requests. The next case is an excellent illustration of a situation where an appellate court affirmed a lower court’s determination that a large reduction was in order before awarding fees to a FEHA plaintiff’s attorneys.
Jimenez v. Too Fast, Inc., Case No. B212231 (2d Dist., Div. 1 Feb. 26, 2010) (unpublished) involved a situation where plaintiff suing under FEHA obtained a jury verdict of $55,000 plus costs of $18,000 even though seeking damages in the $275,000-$775,000 range. Plaintiff’s two set of attorneys sought $686,290.50 in fees, based on a claimed 872.8 total hours spent by the two attorneys and a paralegal (factoring in a 1.75 multiplier, based on attorney hourly rates of $475/$500 and the paralegal’s hourly rate of $115). One of the attorneys requested $42,560 (based on 89.6 hours) for preparing the fee motion.
The trial court, who felt that the jury could have defensed the matter, believed the fee request was unreasonable and inflated in nature, awarding plaintiff $84,000 in fees based on 240 hours multiplied by $350, rejecting a multiplier, and determining that both attorneys would have to divide up respective fees from the total amount awarded. The lower court found the trial did not take even 20 hours of jury time, there were no expert witnesses, and the case was not complicated.
The Second District, Division 1 affirmed.
Only hours reasonably spent are subject to compensation under the FEHA fee-shifting statute. (Horsford v. Board of Trustees of California State University, 132 Cal.App.4th 359, 394 (2005).) The recent state supreme court case of Chavez v. City of Los Angeles, 47 Cal.4th 970, 990-991 (2010) recognized that a trial court does not abuse its discretion in denying fees altogether in a FEHA case where the fee request is unreasonably inflated. In Jimenez, the trial court obviously felt the fee request was unreasonably inflated and indicated it was being generous in awarding what it did. Given that the fees could have been denied altogether, the substantial reduction was not an abuse of discretion under the circumstances.