First District, Division 1 Does Reject That Insurance Defense Counsel Cannot Seek Fee Recovery. In Roeder v. Gardner, Case No. A123864 (1st Dist., Div. 1 Feb. 22, 2010) (unpublished), defendant—through insurance defense counsel—obtained an anti-SLAPP strike of four causes of action out of eight. The trial court awarded $9,325 in mandatory attorney’s fees and […]
Second District, Division 1 Rules Plaintiff’s Mandate Challenge to Compel City To Award a Contract Through Competitive Bidding Not Subject to anti-SLAPP Statute. City of Pico Rivera likely felt pretty good after SLAPPing a plaintiff business’s mandate challenge to City’s invalidation of a contract with plaintiff and reentry into a contract with one of
Trope Prohibition Did Not Apply. Trope v. Katz, 11 Cal.4th 274, 292 (1995) can strike fears into the heart of litigators winning hard fought battles for their own interests—it held that a law firm that is represented in litigation by its member attorneys cannot recover attorney’s fees under Civil Code section 1717. Trope has
Part 1 of 2: First Ten Grouping—Nos. 11-20. As noted in an earlier post, we have accumulated our “top 20” attorney’s fees decisions, recognizing that we limit the list to published decisions and that the order reflects nothing about the importance of the decision. Rather, we try to survey decisions of interest in different
First District, Division 3 Reverses Fee Award. As we have seen in cases reviewed in our category “SLAPP,” prevailing defendants on SLAPP motions are entitled to mandatory reasonable attorney’s fees. However, plaintiffs can get them if the court finds that the defendant’s SLAPP motion was frivolous or intended for dilatory purposes. Code Civ. Proc.,
Second District Determines SLAPP Ruling Does Determine Amount of Motion to Strike Fees, But Remaining Attorney’s Fees Are Fair Game and Defendant Bears Burden of Allocating Out Unreasonable Fees. The next decision is an interesting one that we predict will have more and more play as SLAPP motions and later malicious prosecution awards interact in
Trial Court Reduced Fee Request By $31,000. In our category “SLAPP,” we have reviewed many decision awarding mandatory attorney’s fees to defendants prevailing in SLAPP proceedings. (Code Civ. Proc., § 425.16(c).) Here is one where substantial fees were awarded, even though substantial fees were reduced from the requested amount. Winning defendants in
Second District, Division 3 Allows Dismissal of Action, But Does Not Prevent Trial Court From Considering Defense Request for Fees. This next case is an interesting one and may not be the favorite of defendants bringing anti-SLAPP motions (and hoping to recoup attorney’s fees as the eventual prevailing party). It considers the impact of
Second District, Division 3 Does Split on Merits Affirmance. In our category “SLAPP,” we have surveyed many California decisions involving appeal of mandatory fee-shifting awards in favor of prevailing defendants in anti-SLAPP proceedings. Both the fee requests and eventual awards can be sizable in nature, although lower courts frequently award much less than
Contentious Litigation Accounts for the Sizable Fee Awards. Under our category “SLAPP,” we have examined numerous cases involving fee awards entered in favor of defendants winning SLAPP motions under the mandatory fee-shifting statute (Civ. Code, sec. 425.16(c); Pfeiffer Venice Properties v. Bernard, 101 Cal.App.4th 211, 215 (2002).) Next, we examine two cases where
