Second District, Division 8 Reinforces the Lesson in Recent Unpublished Decision.
In Law Offices of Nejadpour & Associates v. Gonzalez, Case No. B212803 (2d Dist., Div. 5 Nov. 9, 2009) (unpublished), a professional law corporation (PLC) successfully won a judgment for delinquent fees from a former client. The retainer agreement had a fees clause. However, the trial court denied awarding fees to PLC even though it was undisputedly the prevailing party, a determination affirmed upon an appeal by PLC.
Reason? Very simple. PLC used an associate attorney to handle the collection case, and this choice ran afoul of Trope v. Katz, 11 Cal.4th 274 (1995), where the California Supreme Court denied fee recovery to attorneys representing themselves in pro per. Although PLC tried to analogize the associate to in-house counsel (where fee recovery is allowed via PLCM Group v. Drexler, 22 Cal.4th 1084 (2000) [another of our Leading Cases]), the appellate panel found that the attempted analogy inapt for an associate employed by the PLC.