Request For $571,495.60 in Fees Rebuffed; Fifth District Gives Great Review of Fee Standards For Both Trial and Appellate Levels.
This next case is an interesting sequel to an on-going dispute by which a plaintiff prevailed against the Orosi Public Utility District for Brown Act and California Public Records Act violations, with the first scheme carrying a discretionary fee shifting provision and the latter scheme carrying a mandatory fee shifting provision. After dismissing a deadline to file appellate fees in connection with a prior appeal, plaintiff claimed entitlement to a “remarkable” (that is the appellate court’s word, not ours) $571,495.60 in attorney’s fees (and an increased 2.0-plus multiplier). The trial court, after denying appellate attorney’s fees due to the blown deadline, pared down the hourly rate request, eliminated time not related to the Brown Act/Public Records Act claims, and reduced some excessive time, then applied a 1.25 multiplier as an enhancement, and awarded a combined $20,000 fee award for both causes of action.
Plaintiff’s appeal of this award in Galbiso v. Orosi Public Utility Dist., Case No. F059461 (5th Dist. June 15, 2011) (unpublished) was not successful.
To begin with, this opinion has a terrific distillation of trial and appellate court standards regarding fee awards: (1) abuse of discretion governs review of credibility contests; (2) discretion must be exercised in line with governing law regarding lodestar methodology; (3) the lodestar analysis to be followed is set forth in PLCM Group v. Drexler, 22 Cal.4th 1084 (2000) [one of our Leading Cases]; and (4) apportionment of fees between compensable and noncompensable claims is discretionary with the lower court, but does not need to be done concerning issues common to all claims or where claims are inextricably intertwined so it would be impracticable to separate out the time into compensable and noncompensable units. (Slip Opn., pp. 11-13.)
However, when applying these principles, the appellate court found that the trial court did carefully follow the correct fee roadmap, with no particular challenges made by plaintiff to the apportionment or to the duplicative/inefficient reductions made by the lower court. The lower court did utilize time records in coming to its conclusions and applied a proper enhancement given the circumstances of the case.
The denial of appellate fees for missing the deadline was sustained, given that plaintiff deliberately took the matter off calendar after being warned about the time requirements that might have counseled against such a move.