Six-Plus Hours During Trial Not Deemed Unreasonable For Litigation Attorney’s Efforts.
Client retained a trial litigation Attorney less than two months before a trial in which she claimed ownership to an Oakland condominium even though her relatives paid significant mortgage expenses and loan interest costs on the condominium. Attorney hit the ball out of the park during an 8-day jury trial, receiving a direct verdict by which Former Client gained possession of a $450,000 property and did not have to reimburse relatives during their years of occupancy. Attorney submitted billings for what even Former Client conceded was a "good result." Even though Former Client had previously paid $18,000, she balked at paying the remainder of $50,000 owed to Attorney for trial activities. Attorney sued Former Client under the written retainer agreement between the two. After a bench trial, Attorney recouped a fee judgment of $57,562.87 (the remainder plus prejudgment interest).
Appleton v. Tu, Case No. A118006 (1st Dist., Div. 4 Sept. 26, 2008) (unpublished) dealt with Former Client’s appeal of the fee judgment in favor of Attorney. Former Client did not prevail, because the Court of Appeal affirmed.
The fees claimed by Attorney were not exorbitant. Former Client was horrified that a trial litigator could bill more than six hours per day to the Client’s case. Get real, was the appellate panel’s response. Here are bullet points for litigators to savor:
· "Six of the eight trial days exceed 12 hours, which is not surprising. Contrary to [Former Client’s] supposition, long hours are not unusual for an attorney, especially one trying a case."
· Responding to Former Client’s contention that Attorney could not have worked six hours out of a seven hour day—"The central flaw in this logic is that there are not seven hours in a work day for trial attorneys, who routinely work into the night on behalf of their clients."
The bloggers, who are both trial litigators, would like to thank Justice Sepulveda (and the First District, Division Four panel endorsing Appleton) for its recognition that trial days well exceed 6-7 hours per day—in fact, we can attest that they sometimes double or treble these amounts depending on the nature of the case. (However, 7 hour days during trial are not the norm, but the base minimum in our experience.)