Family Law, Judgment Enforcement, And POOF!: Wild Set Of Facts Convinces Appellate Court To Reverse $307,145.22 Fee Recovery By Husband Against Wife’s Lead Attorneys

Fourth District, Division 3 Finds No Predicate Basis Under CCP Section 724.080 to Award Fees For Failing To Record a Judgment Satisfaction.

     Here is a Thanksgiving gift to everyone in a wild family law dispute. We knew that this one would be good when it began this way: “Family law cases, as we said in In re Marriage of Schaffer (1999) 69 Cal.App.4^th 801, 808, can sometimes ‘resemble an unruly desert caravan strung out upon the sands.’ This case is an example.” Wow.

     In Le Plastrier v. Phillips, Case No. G038306 (4^th Dist., Div. 3 Nov. 25, 2009) (unpublished), our local Fourth District, Division 3—in an opinion penned in the distinctive style of authoring Presiding Justice Sills—dealt with convoluted family law marital dissolution agreements between a very wealthy couple splitting “nice” properties in New York City and Newport Coast. What eventually happened is that husband obtained some fairly substantial compensatory awards against wife’s dissolution lead attorney based upon slander of title and failing to timely record a satisfaction of judgment after demand by husband under Code of Civil Procedure section 724.050. The part that most interests us (although the whole opinion is an interesting novelette of its own) is that husband was awarded attorney’s fees of $307,145.22 (out of a requested $399,076.72), under Code of Civil Procedure section 724.080 [the attorney’s fees provision for violating the failure to record a satisfaction of judgment provision after demand], against wife’s lead dissolution attorney. The high fee award was based on the trial court’s perception that the win on the slander of title claim was “inextricably intertwined” with the section 724.050 win so as to justify the large fee recovery. Attorney was, to say the least, dismayed, appealing the substantial fee award.

     On appeal, the Fourth District, Division 3 reversed.

     Based on the record, the appellate court could not find substantial evidence that showed husband had actually paid the judgment (relying instead on offsets that were felt to be hokey in nature) and that judgment creditor wife’s attorney had acted without just cause in failing to record a judgment satisfaction (given correspondence indicating that there might be more that husband had to pay). These two elements were predicates for imposition of liability under section 724.050. So, actually, you can characterize this decision as a POOF!—once the liability anchor went away, so too did the fee award under section 724.080. (BLOG OBSERVATION—The appellate court potentially faced having to resolve whether section 724.080 fees can even be awarded against a judgment creditor’s attorney rather than just the creditor alone; however, it expressly did not have to decide the issue given the reversal based on the fee predicate failure.)