Sixth District Also Finds No Abuse In Fee Award In Previous Action Under Private Attorney General Statute.
The next case involves the extent to which successful attorneys in a plaintiff’s class action should be awarded fees for amicus curiae work in another action that dealt with the same issues and eventually led to a recovery in the particular class action at issue. The trial court denied awarding these fees, but the Sixth District reversed.
In Ramon v. County of Santa Clara, Case No. H032542 (6th Dist., May 4, 2009) (certified for partial publication), putative class action representative’s attorneys spent $81,539.10 for fees in opposing the County’s amicus efforts in a prior proceeding that resulted in a favorable plaintiffs’ ruling in a published appellate decision on the crucial issue in controversy. The trial court denied awarding the amicus fees to plaintiff’s attorney under Code of Civil Procedure section 1021.5 based on Connerly v. State Personnel Bd., 37 Cal.4th 1169 (2006), where the state supreme court refused to penalize amicus advisory groups with 1021.5 fees because they were not the equivalent of opposing parties. Plaintiff appealed, and won.
The Sixth District determined that the County was not akin to an advisory group in the related proceeding, because it was advocating the same interpretation of a statute that was at issue in other actions in which County was sued. Rather, the Court of Appeal found persuasive both state and federal decisions awarding fees to plaintiffs for services in collateral litigation that was useful and necessary to the ultimate resolution of a case. (See especially Hasbrouck v. Texaco, Inc., 879 F.2d 632, 638 (9th Cir. 1989) [“it was reasonable to award fees for the amicus effort as an item of service which would have been undertaken by a reasonable and prudent lawyer to advance or protect his client’s interest.”].) The matter was remanded to give the trial court the opportunity to award fees for the amicus efforts.
Ramon also sustained the lower court’s award of fees and costs totaling $173,414.10 to plaintiff in an unpublished section of the opinion relating to County’s cross-appeal. It has an interesting discussion of lodestar and apportionment issues under section 1021.5, where plaintiff took the opportunity to submit supplemental fee briefing in response to trial court concerns that certain tasks needed to be segregated out and then accounted for.