Reason Was That The Lower Court Applied The CCP § 1032 Prevailing Party Rigid Test, Rather Than A More Pragmatic Approach Which Governed Statutory Violations.
In German v. La Floure, LLC, Case No. D086600 (4th Dist., Div. 1 Dec. 10, 2025) (unpublished), plaintiff won wage/hour violations against defendants to the tune of $11,594.80 in damages, while defendants defensed plaintiff’s FEHA claims. Defendants argued there was no prevailing party as a matter of law, but the lower court relied on the CCP § 1032 prevailing party definition usually applied to routine costs for purposes of determining that plaintiff prevailed in the wage/hour action, awarding her $163,440 in attorney’s fees in the wage/hour case because she obtained a “net monetary recovery.”
The 4/1 DCA reversed and remanded. The lower court utilized the wrong legal standard, because generally section 1032 has been rejected as automatically applying where a statute provides for an award of fees (Labor Code statutes in this case). Instead, “the cases have applied a more holistic and pragmatic approach that assesses the extent to which a party achieved its overall litigation objectives as well as the underlying purposes that the attorney’s fees provision seek to achieve.” (Duff v. Jaguar Land Rover North America, LLC, 74 Cal.App.5th 491, 502-504 [Song-Beverly Act lemon law statute]; Sharif v. Mehusa, Inc., 241 Cal.App.4th 185, 189-190, 194 [plaintiff won on an Equal Pay Act claim but lost wage/hour claim, so fee recovery had to be separately analyzed on each claim].) The matter was remanded to have the lower court use the more holistic approach, but some noteworthy observations were made along the way. First, Defendants did prevail on the FEHA claims, but they never moved for fees because there was no determination that plaintiff’s action was frivolous—the predicate for a FEHA fee award in favor of the defense. Second, merely finding that a plaintiff did not recover everything sought is seldom sufficient reason to find that plaintiff did not prevail for fee purposes—tempered by reduction of the requested amount due to limited success. Third, a lower court must liberally construe remedial Labor Code provisions.
In the end, the matter was remanded to determine if plaintiff prevailed on her wage/hour claims or to decide if there was no prevailing party under the correct legal standard—but the appellate court rejected the defense argument there was no prevailing party as a matter of law.