Although A Validation Action Is Involved, The Broader Reasoning Gives Some Extension Days Past A Jurisdictional Appeal Deadline For Civil Appeals In General.
Alameda County Taxpayers Assn., Inc. v. City of Oakland, Case No. A172609 (1st Dist., Div. 4 Oct. 28, 2026) (partially published, on timeliness of fee motion) involved a real party in interest (zoo operator) which became entangled, along with City, in a petitioner’s reverse validation proceeding to invalidate Measure Y, an over-the-time funding mechanism for the Oakland Zoo. In a prior appeal, the appellate court severed some parts of Measure Y, but found it was valid and rejected the argument that a two-thirds vote was necessary for passage. RPI moved for $79,932.81 in attorney’s fees under the private attorney general statute, but the lower court awarded $27,675—reducing for work on unrelated matters and discounting because City carried a large share of the opposition efforts. Petitioner appealed the award. On the merits under CCP § 1021.5, the court found RPI satisfied the private attorney general elements and the award was properly reduced for City’s work effort, all done in the unpublished portions of the opinion.
The opinion was partially published on petitioner’s challenge that RPI filed the motion one day late given that an appeal of a validation action judgment needs to be done within 30 days from notice of entry of judgment by a party. The key fact here was that the notice of entry of judgment was served via electronic service, so the issue distilled into whether the two court day extension applied under CCP § 1016.6 so as to make the fee motion filing timely. Although dealing with validation statutes, the 1/4 DCA disagreed in reasoning which we believe extends to civil appeals. It found that there was a difference between a notice of appeal (which is rigidly jurisdictional) and a fee motion (where deadlines are not mandatory), such that the lower court’s determination that the 1016.6 extension applied was justified with respect to the fee motion. (The appellate court, however, did hedge its bets by saying that the lower court found that the one-day transgression was not large enough to not entertain the fee motion, an implicit extension allowable under the CRC.)