Except for Complaint in Intervention Fees, Court of Appeal Sustains $1,764,222.50 Fee Award.
For those of you practicing in California’s Central Valley (or, for that matter, attorneys wanting some more insight into how judges gauge the reasonableness of fees), stay tuned for the next one.
The Fifth District, in Ennis Commercial Properties, LLC v. Paregian, Case No. F055151 (5th Dist. Jan. 13, 2010) (unpublished), sustained in major part a $1,764,222.50 fee award to a prevailing defendant out of a requested $2,233,317. Multiple challenges were raised about the excessive nature of the hourly rates and overall request, but only one small concern required a remand.
In the process, the Court of Appeal made these observations that will be helpful to us fee fanatics:
- The litigation did involve a property worth $ 20 million, with both sides running up multimillion fee awards (showing that what a litigation opponent spent may well have probative value);
- The trial court found these rates were reasonable for the Stanislaus County area: $300/hour for attorneys with 20 plus years of experience, $275/hr. for 11-19 years, $250/hour for 6-10 years, $225/hour for 1-5 years; $150/hour for law clerks/summer associates/interns, and $150/hour for paralegals;
- There is no categorical rule against reimbursement via fee award for administrative activities of lawyers and paralegals, with it being inevitable that these professionals will carry out some of these activities to appear in law firms’ hourly billings (although too much of this would antagonize the average client and probably lead a trial court to make appropriate reductions);
- California law did not track federal cases requiring more of an explanation as to why certain fees were awarded, reduced, or rejected (“ . . . and there is no California authority for the view that a trial court must explain why it finds the attorney hours submitted by a prevailing party to be reasonable even though the losing party says they are not reasonable,” rejecting adoption of McCown v. City of Fontana, 565 F.3d 1097, 1102 (9th Cir. 2009) in the state arena);
- No authority precludes awarding time traveling or preparing to travel as attorney’s fees; and
- No rule indicates that a prevailing party otherwise entitled to attorney’s fees can never recover fees for unsuccessfully opposing a motion brought by the losing party.
The one area requiring a remand was time spent on a complaint in intervention, which the trial court found noncompensable but apparently did not completely factor into the final award.