Fourth District, Division One Reinforces that Consumer Statutes Are Not a Blank Attorney’s Fees Check.
This next one is a lemon law case, arising under the Song-Beverly Consumer Warranty Act with a mandatory fee-shifting provision. However, that fee-shifting statute only allows recovery of reasonable attorney’s fees to the prevailing party (Civ. Code, § 1794(d); Nightingale v. Hyundai Motor American, 31 Cal.App.4th 99, 104 (1994).) The reasonableness language was the rub—and, ultimately, determining factor—in the appellate affirmance of fees to plaintiff’s counsel in a sum much less than the requested amount.
Plaintiff was awarded $20,400 in fees under the lemon law, rather than the $81,225 she requested. To put things in context, defendant did pay her $9,513.18 in settlement, reserving the reasonableness of fees for determination by the trial court. Even earlier, defendant did make some settlement offers that the appellate court thought were fair in nature, albeit rejected (some informal and some under Code of Civil Procedure section 998).
The appellate court affirmed the lower fee award, finding that plaintiff was unreasonable in rejecting a $5,100 offer after expending a lot more in fees to garner $9,513.18—even though the defendant offered to allow the trial court to award reasonable attorney’s fees in a post-offer acceptance proceeding. So, as we have seen in other cases, plaintiffs’ attorneys—even in mandatory fee-shifting cases—need to seriously evaluate settlement offers under penalty of getting much, much less fees for prevailing on behalf of their clients. The case is McCarthy v. Hyundai Motor America, Case No. D055817 (4th Dist., Div. 1 July 14, 2010) (unpublished).
