Plaintiff’s Financial Burden Not Out Of Proportion To Its Individual Stake In The Case.
In Pacific Auto Recycling Centers, Inc. v. Calif. Dept. of Toxic Substances Control, Case No. B338236 (2d Dist., Div. 1 Sept. 30, 2025) (unpublished), PARC, a scrap metal recycler, successfully challenged DTSC’s rescission of a policy—one which had excluded some scrap metals from being classified as hazardous materials—because it did not comply with the Administrative Procedures Act. In its own petition, PARC alleged that DTSC’s new interpretation–based on its rescissionary action–would have been catastrophic, impede its ability to operate, and cost plaintiff tens of millions of dollars to rebuild its facility to comply with the inclusion of certain scrap metal as hazardous materials. PARC then moved to recover private attorney general fees of $557,676.06, with the lower court awarding fees of $475,971.49. In its moving papers, PARC never tried to quantify the financial burden to it and never argued that the pecuniary upside was speculative.
The 2/1 DCA reversed the fee award as a matter of law, determining that PARC failed the 1021.5 element of showing an unproportionate financial burden. Aside from the lack of quantification in its moving papers, PARC presented no authority to support the proposition that avoiding a significant financial loss constituted a nonpecuniary advantage under the Whitley cost-benefit analysis required under section 1021.5. Its own instigating petition showed that the financial burden to litigate the case was not of proportion to its upside in avoiding significant financial losses.