The Matter Was Remanded For Purposes Of Determining Whether The Second Requested Fees Were Reasonable In Nature.
This next post shows the value of keeping good monthly billings and the beauty of being precise in correlating fee requests to specified time ranges. What happened in Business Alliance Ins. Co. v. Celis, Case No. D086880 (4th Dist., Div. 1 Sept. 1, 2026) (unpublished) is that a surety issued a construction bond to a contractor, in tandem with a surety agreement with a contractor indemnification and with the agreement containing a contractual fees clause. The lower court granted surety’s first request for fee recovery from indemnifying contractor through a specified period of time. Surety then requested more fees, but the lower court credited contractor’s argument that the second request was duplicative of work in the first request, granting fees in a much-reduced amount. The appellate court reversed because the billing records and motion paperwork demonstrated that the second request was for fees during a different time period than the first request. Given there was no evidentiary foundation to support the fee reduction, the matter was remanded to determine if the fees in the second request were reasonable in nature.