Almost $500,000 in Total Fees Assessed Against Losing Homeowners.
For all you Olympic watchers out there, this next case will resonate the famous “agony of defeat” line from ABC’s Wide World of Sports.
In Sharp v. Anderson, Case No. B212528 (2d Dist., Div. 1 Feb. 18, 2010) (unpublished), plaintiff neighboring real property owners lost contentious litigation against their neighbors and the HOA/HOA directors. The lower court awarded neighbors $184,510 in attorney’s fees and $14,109 in costs and also awarded HOA $295,547 in fees under Civil Code section 1354(c), a fee-shifting provision under the Davis-Stirling Common Interest Development Act.
Losers appealed.
But losers did not prevail. The orders were affirmed.
The appellate decision has a nice discussion of the deferential abuse of discretion standard for any of you readers needing a recitation for any pending work. (See Bernardi v. County of Monterey, 167 Cal.App.4th 1379, 1394 (2008) [broad discretion allowed to trial courts in determining the amount of reasonable attorney’s fees; “this determination is necessarily ad hoc and must be resolved on the particular circumstances of each case”].)
Initially, the Court of Appeal chastised appellants for merely recycling argument presented below. This was not proper appellate advocacy, and all of their arguments were forfeited (although the court did go on to discuss the merits).
Appellants creatively argued that the fee winners’ documentation did not comply with the unconscionable fee requirements of California Rules of Professional Conduct rule 4-200(B). Not so, said the appellate panel, because the professional conduct rules only govern attorney discipline and do not create any new substantive duties for attorneys.
The Court of Appeal also found that (1) the trial court was not required to explain its decision on defendants’ fee requests (Gorman v. Tassajara Development Corp., 178 Cal.App.4th 44, 65, 67 (2009)); and (2) fee claimants can rely on attorney declarations evidencing reasonable hourly rates, billing rates charged, and the number of hours spent, not needing to produce billing statements and detailed time records (Raining Data Corp. v. Barrenechea, 175 Cal.App.4th 1363, 1375 (2009)). Judged by these standards, the winners did produce detailed attorney declarations to support their requests, even though the trial court did request more supplemental detail (which was adequately supplied).