Reason: Legal Expenses; Some Are Regulating and Some Are Litigating Bans. As reported by Deepa Bharath in an article in the July 21, 2011 edition of The Orange County Register, Garden Grove has chosen to regulate rather than ban medical-marijuana dispensaries. The reason? It spent about $219,000 in a four-year court battle over […]
Except for Slander Claim, Attorneys Relegated to Arbitrating Remaining Fee Claims. This next one is an interesting dispute between (former) clients and attorneys, where the lawyers sued for standard breach of contract, fraud, and slander. The problem is that lawyers could not effectively showe that they served a notice of right to arbitrate
Substantial Fee Recovery Allowed We know of nothing proprietary, so here is a fees clause contained in a LLC Operating Agreement that reaped one party a truck load of fees: “If any party to this Agreement institutes any action, suit, counterclaim, appeal, arbitration or mediation for any relief against another party, declaratory or
Family Code Section 2033 FLARPL Considered. Although there was a reversal because an order rendered without an indispensable party is void (with the appellant being an indispensable party able to challenge the void order), the appellate court in Marriage of Ramirez, Case No. D058284 (4th Dist., Div. 1 July 19, 2011) (unpublished) discussed
Equitable Powers Are Broad in Probate Court. Watson v. Watson, Case No. B214891 (2d Dist., Div. 6 July 19, 2011) (unpublished) confirms the broad powers granted to probate courts to award attorney’s fees against trustees that take bad faith actions against a trust. Here, trustee conveyed property to himself out of the trust
Condition Was Too Much of a Sanction, Because Fees Not Causally Related to Cross-Complaint Filing. In a convoluted fee dispute between former client and attorney, the trial court granted attorney leave to file a cross-complaint, but conditioned on attorney paying client some $80,000 to compensate her for attorney’s fees she incurred in preparing
Needs Based Award to Wife Justified. In Marriage of Shannahan, Case No. D057453 (4th Dist., Div. 1 July 18, 2011) (unpublished), husband was ordered to pay $25,000 in attorney’s fees based on need to ex-wife’s counsel. Husband, after all, was an attorney, and appealed a previous fee award to wife without posting a
. . . Counting Its Lawyer Expenses And Costs Of Reimbursing Winning Litigant’s Attorneys. As reported by Brad Branan in a July 18, 2011 post at the online version of The Sacramento Bee, the Sacramento County Employees’ Retirement System should not be happy with the amount of legal expenses it spent in fighting California
Having 70% of Settlement Funds Go to Attorney’s Fees Not Digestible. Okay, for all of you probate and conservatorship practitioners, here is an interesting one involving dueling attorney’s fees requests by conservatorship candidates. The winning conservator got his requested fees whacked down by 75%, while the losing conservatorship–who also got a big
Marriage of Wolf, Case No. A128509 (1st Dist., Div. 3 July 15, 2011) (Unpublished). In this one, ex-wife was denied a request for attorney’s fees after a lower court found there were no reasonable grounds for her appeal. However, the lower court’s decision was without prejudice to her ability to renew the motion
