Defense Showed Good Faith Efforts, Albeit Unsuccessful, To Hire Local Counsel, So Higher Hourly Rate Compensation Was In Order.
So this case was venued in Siskiyou County, which is a northern California county abutting on the Oregon border near Mount Shasta and having a population of 44,000 – 45,000 depending on how you count things. We gotta think the lawyer census is much less than that in more populous California counties. That is borne out by the end result in Marshall v. Webster, Case No. C088240 (3d Dist. Aug. 27, 2020) (partially published; fee discussion not published).
There, the defense won a SLAPP motion and was awarded $79,000 in mandatory fees, although this was a reduction from the requested $121,815 in fees—with the defense using San Francisco rather than local attorneys.
The fee award was affirmed. Plaintiffs’ principal contention was that it was err to award defense hourly rates based on San Francisco rates versus local venue rates. Although generally a venue-based lodestar standard is the measure, that can bend when local attorneys are not available or the hiring of local counsel was impracticable. In this case, the defense presented evidence that he could not obtain local counsel on a contingency basis for representation given defendant did not have the resources for traditional hourly representation. The local attorney did tell defendant that $350 per hour was typical for Siskiyou County, even though he declined to take on a contingency matter. The $450 and $500 hourly rates for the experienced defense counsel from San Francisco did not offend either the trial or appellate courts given the inability to obtain local counsel willing to take the matter on a contingency basis. However, given the reduction in the requested amount by almost $43,000 (about a 35% reduction), this only cemented the fee award as being reasonable in amount.
UPDATE: We can now report that the (previously unpublished) fee discussion was published on September 4, 2020.