Certain Costs Not Awardable, With Lower Court’s Fee Reduction For Incivility And Abusive Litigation Found To Be No Abuse Of Discretion.
In Madison v. Theodore, Case Nos. B310551 et al. (2d Dist., Div. 7 Jan. 8, 2025) (unpublished), appellant lost a fiduciary duty-based case against plaintiffs to the tune of $3.9 million based on a project to operate a luxury villa in Cabo San Lucas. Costs and fee were awarded to defendants, specifically, about $160,000 in costs and $1,751,500 in attorney’s fees out of a $2,124,450 fee request. With some minor revisions, the judgments were affirmed on appeal.
About $87,371 from the routine costs award was stricken on appeal—they were for non-court authorized hearing and trial transcripts (with the deposition costs argument not succeeding on appeal) and for preliminary injunction bond costs in a separate action. With respect to fees, the lower court properly reduced the fee request by $340,850 for incivility and abusive litigation tactics, including mistrial allegations (Karton v. Ari Design & Construction, Inc., 61 Cal.App.5th 734 (2021). Appellant’s argument that he should be allowed an offset for non-prevailing costs and fees rang hollow because there can only be one prevailing party under Civil Code section 1717, which was the other side.