. . . . Although Fee Award Made At Same Time As Merits Ruling Can Be Appealed.
The First District, Division 3 took the time to reconsider a motion to dismiss a SLAPP plaintiff’s appeal of fairly substantial fee awards after defense grants of a SLAPP motion. (The fee awards totaled over $603,000 for three defendants – we kid you not.) Plaintiff sought review of the fee orders, but the appellate concluded, as it did before, that the awards were not then appealable and dismissed the appeal.
In re Ambac Bond Ins. Cases, Case No. A142632 (1st Dist., Div. 3 Apr. 4, 2016) (unpublished) decided that that the post-SLAPP merits ruling fee awards did not fall within any of the list of appealable orders, and were neither sanctions nor fell within the “collateral order” exception. However, it did acknowledge that the post-merits timing of the fee awards was important, given that some cases have held that a fee order reviewed simultaneously with the ruling on the merits of the SLAPP motion could be reviewed in order to promote judicial economy. That did not leave plaintiff without a remedy, though: once there was a final judgment, the fee award could be appealed. We also surmise that the interlocutory nature of the order also meant that the defense could not undertake collection efforts on the awards. (However, once the matter was final and if an appeal is taken, the law in this area is that the fee award must be bonded in order to prevent collection efforts.)