Correctness of Award Reinforced by $14,000 Reduction in Requested Fees.
By now, you followers of our blog know that Code of Civil Procedure section 425.16(c) provides for a mandatory award of fees to a winning SLAPP defendant. Because these proceedings are often intensive and involve parsing through lots of documents/issues, large awards are not an infrequent occurrence.
$129,938.75 was the fee award to a winning SLAPP defendant in McKinney v. NuScience Corp., Case Nos. B240831/B244074 (2d Dist., Div. 2 Nov. 25, 2013) (unpublished).
It was affirmed on appeal. No abuse of discretion in the amount of the award occurred because (1) the underlying malicious prosecution case was complicated and involved review of various judgments/parsing through the merits of various legal theories, and (2) the trial court reduced the requested fee amount by about $14,000.