Second District, Division 3 Finds No Incorporation of Other Fees Clauses to Sustain Award. One side to a joint venture agreement was vindicated completely with a defense jury verdict and was then awarded attorney’s fees of $75,000 (300 hours at a $250 hourly rate, out of a fee request in the $210-240,000 range). The […]
Second District, Division 8 Reinforces that Contemporaneous Time Record Submission Is Not a Fee Recovery Requirement. This next case illustrates two important principles under Civil Code section 1717: (1) you need some fee entitlement basis—either a statute or contractual fees clause; and (2) California state law is more lenient on fee substantiation, although it
Fifth District Overturns Based on a Pragmatic Assessment of Litigation Results. Who says that appellate courts are not pragmatic in their assessment of who prevailed for purposes of awarding attorney’s fees? That is the law after all, and the next case is an illustration of where a cause was reversed because neither side prevailed
Result Was An Adverse Fee/Cost Award of Over $275,000 In Gupta v. Shue, Case No. B198449 (Apr. 30, 2009) (unpublished), both sides engaged in bitter, protracted litigation over whether each received, by assignment, a general partnership interest in a real estate limited partnership—with the limited partnership caught in the middle of the litigation. After
Fourth District, Division 3 Reaffirms the Principle in Recent Unpublished Opinion. Day to day, our intermediate appellate courts confront controversies involving application of Civil Code section 1717, the statutory provision that allows for enforcement of contractual fees clauses in favor of prevailing parties. However, the wording of the fees clauses themselves, for solely contractual
Fourth District, Division 3 Finds Section 1717 Cannot Be “Bootstrapped” Into Fee Entitlement For Breach of Contract With No Fees Provision. Civil Code section 1717 focuses on mutuality of remedy for enforcement of contractual attorney’s fees clauses. However, it is not a statutory dragnet to enforce an oral settlement with no fees clause or
Fourth District, Division 3 Finds Fees Clause in Contingency Agreement Was Inconsequential. Earlier, in our September 21, 2008 post, we reported on Strong v. Beydoun, 166 Cal.App.4th 1398 (2008), where defendant clients owed no unjust enrichment recovery to an attorney who failed to obtain clients’ signatures to a fee-sharing agreement with clients’ other counsel.
Rationale Parallels Result by Different Division of Second District in Superior Property of Carson v. Regency Outdoor Advertising. In our April 17, 2009 post, we examined Superior Property of Carson LLC v. Regency Outdoor Advertising, Inc., a Second District, Division 3 unpublished decision that affirmed a substantial fee award under Civil Code section 1717,
Second District, Division 3 Finds Defendant Lessors Prevailed Despite Claim of “Triplicative” Work By Three Law Firms. The next one is a wild one and illustrates that substantial attorney’s fees will be awarded under Civil Code section 1717 once the court determines which litigants “prevailed” by achieving their main objectives in the germane
PLCM Is the Leading Case Under Civil Code Section 1717, And Likely In Other Contexts. We would like to thank Michael J. Ireland, General Counsel of Majestic Investment Group in Woodland Hills, for this message: “I don’t know if there are many of us out there, but I would like to see cases discussing
