Appellate Court Had No Problem With $9,000 SLAPP Request For 24 Hours Of Work.
Just to show you that abuse of discretion is not an unlimited deferential standard of review, we post on Kohanbash v. Specialty Baking, Inc., Case No. B283117 (2d Dist., Div. 1 July 1, 2019) (unpublished). What happened in this case is that the lower court granted a successful SLAPP prevailing party only $1,875 in fees for five hours of work on the SLAPP motion, about an 80% reduction from the $9,000 in fees claimed for 24 hours of work. This case was not only reversed, but it was remanded with appellate instructions to grant the entire $9,000 fee request. The appellate court had real difficulty determining that five hours only in SLAPP work was all that should be compensated given that overall reasonableness of the fee request.