Lower Court Reduced The Requested $95,519.88 In Appellate Fees To Almost Half.
In Malik v. Carlson & Gevelinger, Case No. C101751 (3d Dist. Feb. 20, 2026) (unpublished), prevailing defendants earlier had been awarded SLAPP trial level fees of $14,960 (out of a requested $37,917.48) against plaintiffs, with the lower court reducing for requested hourly rates (rejecting use of the Laffey Matrix to justify higher rates), excessive/anticipated/or unverified amounts, amounts not connected to the SLAPP motion, and duplicative work effort. Losing plaintiffs unsuccessfully challenged the merits determination, not even arguing that the trial level fee award was flawed. The defendants then moved for SLAPP appellate fees, seeking $95,519.88 against plaintiffs. The lower court awarded a reduced amount of $50,305, rejecting hourly rates from the Laffey Matrix and excluding a small amount of the underlying work the prior appeal.
Plaintiffs unsuccessfully lost their appeal of the appellate fee award. Here is why.
They only made generalized objections about excessive, duplicative, or unrelated work, which does not cut it. (Premier Medical Management Systems, Inc. v. Cal. Ins. Guarantee Assn., 163 Cal.App.4th 550, 564 (2008).) Also, duplicative work will only be reduced where it was unnecessary to the tasks at hand. (Center for Biological Diversity v. County of San Bernardino, 188 Cal.App.4th 603, 622 (2010).) California will allow attorney estimates of their hours worked as proper fee substantiation, with no mandatory duty to provide required detailed time records. (Syers Properties III, Inc. v. Rankin (2014) 226 Cal.App.4th 691, 698 (2014).) The appellate court found no authority supporting plaintiffs’ argument that review tasks not directly tethered to appellate work product should not be billed. The fact that defendants spent more time on appellate work than the trial level work was not found persuasive because the species of work are not analogous proceedings. The panel further rejected the notion that it was unreasonable for another attorney with appellate experience in a firm to take over for the trial level attorneys given the differences in appellate workmanship. Plaintiff argued that the hourly rate was excessive because it exceeded the rates charged to client, but this is not the law for determining the reasonable lodestar hourly rate. (Pasternack v. McCullough, 65 Cal.App.5th 1050,1055 (2021).) Even though defense counsel used the Laffey Matrix a second time to no success, this advocacy did not show why the requesting attorneys should be penalized for their advocacy. Finally, plaintiffs made an “unclean hands” defense to awarding any fees, but cases have indicated that non-sanctions, statutory fees should not be denied or reduced to punish litigants for their litigation conduct in most circumstances. (Ketchum v. Moses, 24 Cal.4th 1122, 1142 (2001).)