Rivas v. Altawood, Inc., Case No. E049597 (4th Dist., Div. 2 Apr. 18, 2012) (unpublished).
In this one, while the matter was on appeal, the trial court vacated an attorney’s fees award. However, a mix up occurred and a subsequent writ of execution was issued based on the fees award. The appellate court easily found the writ was improperly issued (after all, there was no necessary fee award predicate), but found that appellant’s remedy was to move to quash the writ of execution in the trial court. If that had been done and appellant appealed from a denial of a quash request, that order could have been reviewed.
Matusek v. Benn, Case No. B229234 (2d Dist, Div. 3 Apr. 18, 2012) (unpublished).
The second in our series involved a situation where plaintiff and one defendant group got “dueling” fee awards, with plaintiff prevailing on some claims and the defense non-suiting on one claim (the claims all having fee entitlement bases). The twist in this one was that one group of defendants satisfied the adverse judgment, including the award of fees and costs. Plaintiff argued that the non-satisfying defendant had to have her fee/costs judgment “offset” against that defendant’s fee/costs judgment. Not so, said the appellate panel. The reason was that the prior defendants’ satisfaction of plaintiff’s fees/costs award effectively extinguished that award because there can only be one satisfaction for an injury–meaning no offset was available. (McCall v. Four Star Music Co., 51 Cal.App.4th 1394, 1398 (1996).)