First District, Division Two Nixes $450,000-Plus Fee Request of Widow.
Aside from the fact that it involved an arbitration between the survivors of music legend Jerry Garcia, we knew this one would be good when the arbitrator started out his decision denying attorney’s fees to the widow this way: “On the issue of attorney fees and costs the positions of the parties about the nature of this arbitration is akin to the story in the 1950 movie Rashomon
Rashomon trailer.
where four people seeing the same incident see it very differently.” Ultimately, the arbitrator (Retired Justice Donald King) denied widow’s request for $450,000-plus in legal expenses (mainly attorney’s fees).
The First District, Division 2, in Garcia v. Jerry Garcia Estate LLC, Case No. A125892 (1st Dist., Div. 2 July 12, 2010) (unpublished) agreed with Justice King’s assessment of the fee request.
In essence, manager of an LLC set up to administer certain Garcia estate assets filed for arbitration to seek instructions on what to do given that the LLC expired by its terms. Mrs. Garcia waffled on joining the arbitration, but eventually did—prevailing on two major issues, but hardly prevailing overall when several of her management suggestions were rejected by the arbitrator. Both the superior and appellate court found no basis to “correct” the arbitration award on the fee issue, because of the arbitral finality rule. (San Francisco Housing Authority v. Service Employees Internat. Union Local 790 (2010) 182 Cal.App.4th 933, 943.) However, respondents on appeal were denied any fees in the superior court law and motion proceeding, a determination also affirmed on appeal.