$97,145.71 Fee Award Out of Requested $488,521.45 Fees/Costs Request Was the Ultimate Result.
The next case illustrates how appellate courts will avoid having to decide the clashing interests of two statutes if they can decide that the lower court showed equitable discretion so as to moot any decision on the “clash.”
Overland v. Scheper Kim & Harris LLP, Case No. B243970 (2d Dist., Div. 2 Aug. 6, 2013) (unpublished) involved a fight between former partners in a four-partner law firm under the Uniform Partnership Act of 1994 (UPA), Corp. Code, § 16100 et seq. Eventually, the lower court’s decision that one former partner was entitled to a 4% versus 25% payout was sustained on appeal.
However, there is more–after all, we are a fees blog, so you know there was an attorney’s fees award involved. Former partner, based on some allegedly false testimony from one of the other former partners of the firm, obtained a fee recovery of $97,145.71 out of a requested $488,521.45–given that Corporations Code section 16701(i) allows a court to discretionarily assess reasonable fees and costs “in amounts the court finds equitable, against a party that the court finds acted arbitrarily, vexatiously, or not in good faith.”
Former partner appealed this “low” (in his view) fee award, arguing that the law firm did not beat his 998 offer of $359,000 so that he was entitled to more fees and costs for prevailing.
The appellate court found that it did not have to decide whether 998 applied in this area, because section 16701(i) did vest the lower court with discretion and the lower court did indicate that it calibrated the request to the amount ultimately awarded even if 998 did apply. Put another way, “no harm, no foul.”
Former partner contended he should have been awarded fees for work effort, but this did not go anywhere based on the Trope prohibition–an attorney representing himself may not recover from an opposing party for the time he spends litigating a matter on his own behalf.