Lower Court Fee Award Affirmed, An Award We Reviewed Earlier.
In our March 6, 2015 post, we discussed a private attorney general fee award of a little shy of $722,000 to Mr. Weiss in a case where he successfully challenged the City of Los Angeles’ delegation of initial review of parking citations to an outside processing agency. We can now report that this litigant’s wins, both on the merits and on the fee award, were recently affirmed in Weiss v. City of Los Angeles, Case No. B259868 (2d Dist., Div. 4 Aug. 8, 2016) (published).
The City challenged the fee award on the grounds that neither a public interest was vindicated nor a significant benefit was achieved under Code of Civil Procedures section 1021.5. The appellate court rebuffed these challenges. Getting the right tribunal to review parking citations is an issue of public importance, a significant benefit was achieved by having the City to face accountability for this review (versus a private outside company), and City itself had to admit that the action resulted in a “complete change” in how it was doing things in this area. Fee award affirmed.