Specify, Specify … Otherwise, Lose the Fee Award!
We do have a category entitled “Requests for Admissions.” Read it. There are lessons to be learned. One of them is to make sure that the RFA denials relate to something tangible–causation, or however else you want to parse it, but make the denials relate to certain issues that were unreasonably denied. Do not just claim all your fees (or a big part) and expect the appellate court to rubberstamp the lower court–we can tell you that this does not happen as often as you might think. Read our category on this issue, but now to the case at hand to reinforce what we have blogged on in the past.
Coming from the Fifth District is Rego Dairy v. Golden State Feeds, LLC, Case Nos. F058548/F058766 (5th Dist. Apr. 21, 2011) (unpublished) to illustrate lessons from our prior posts.
There, plaintiff won on the merits but also was awarded over $216,000 in attorney’s fees based on defendants’ failure to admit under Code of Civil Procedure section 2033.430. However, this award had to be justified on appeal, something that did not happen.
Reason for reversal? No laziness intended, but plaintiff could not establish that all fees incurred in proving causation and damages (which apparently was behind the award) could be allocated to the specific RFA denials, some of which were also done in good faith so that the allocation was further complicated. The burden of proof was on plaintiff to prove causation, not the defense, such that this important principle required reversal of the RFA fee award on appeal.