Challenging Plaintiff Did Not Show Specificity in Padding, Duplication, or Unrelatedness Arguments To Support Fee Reduction.
To our dear readers after Thanksgiving, here is a case with excellent reminders about steps you should take when challenging lower court fee awards. Make sure that you make specific challenges, not just arguments, supported with declarations from local attorneys, experts, or some type of specific analysis that will aid an effort to obtain a fee reduction.
Slotkin v. Nisim, Case Nos. B219695/B221231 (2d Dist., Div. 8 Nov. 29, 2010) (unpublished) is a case that illustrates these lessons very well.
There, litigants were involved in private harassment injunctions disputes. Plaintiff suffered a prior anti-SLAPP defeat by which more than $27,000 in fees were awarded, but the parties reached a settlement, with no appeal being taken from this first donnybrook. However, even in the wake of the settlement agreement, plaintiff filed further harassment injunction proceedings. A TRO was granted, but the defense successfully SLAPPed subsequent proceedings, with the lower court assessing $32,500 in second anti-SLAPP fees against plaintiff as well as $10,625 for prevailing on the injunction proceedings (together with another $978.66 in costs).
Plaintiff appealed. Not a good idea.
Appellant argued that padding and vague entries required a reversal of the fee award. Not enough to surmount appellant’s burden below or on appeal. General arguments on fee excessiveness, duplication, or unrelatedness will seldom work. (Premier Medical Mgt. Systems, Inc. v. CIGA, 163 Cal.App.4th 556, 564 (2008).) Appellant’s undeveloped arguments fell within the “generalized” genre, which did not scale the deferential abuse of discretion standard of review for fee awards.
What about the $10,625 component for prevailing on the harassment injunction? Appellant argued that the TRO gave some traction such that the ultimate dismissal of the injunction petition based on mootness did not mean the defense prevailed. Wrong. (Code Civ. Proc., § 527.6(i); Adler v. Vaicius, 21 Cal.App.4th 1770, 1776 (1993).)