Fee Substantiation Was Adequate, Where Detail Told the Appellate Court All You Needed to Know.
For all of you Spam lovers (bad pun, because this is really, an Internet Anti-Spam case), this next case will be of interest. Not to mention the derivation of the term “spam” in the email context--we will leave it to you to do that research yourself by going to Hypertouch Inc. v. ValueClick, Inc., 192 Cal.App.4th 805, 818 n. 4 (2011).
California does have a fee-shifting statute in favor of the prevailing plaintiff under the Anti-Spam Law. (Bus. & Prof. Code, § 17529.5(b).) So, even though the winner gets small actual damages or only liquidated damages of $1,000 for each unsolicited commercial e-mail violation the Anti-Spam Law, the attorney’s fees recoverable may well be the “end game.” That was the case in the opinion we now review.
Daniel (“Dan Hates Spam”) L. Balsam, a well known California attorney with experience in the spamming area, did win $7,000 in liquidated damages under the anti-Spam Law in the published opinion of Balsam v. Trancos, Inc., Case Nos. A128485/A129458 (1st Dist., Div. 1 Feb. 24, 2012) (certified for publication), where the appellate court determined that untraceable domain name emails could under the right circumstances give rise to liability.
However, Mr. Balsam also won $81,900 in attorney’s fees as the prevailing party (out of a requested $133,830).
Defense challenges to the merits and fees orders did not succeed.
Even though the case could have been brought as a small claims or limited case (even though it clearly exceeded small claims jurisdiction based on the number of emails involved at the start and Mr. Balsam sought permanent injunctive relief outside of the ambit of a limited civil case), the trial court still has discretion to still award fees. (Code Civ. Proc., § 1033(a).) The billings submitted by Mr. Balsam’s counsel, although not up to “big firm” billing practices, did indeed break down hours, hourly rate, and nature of the tasks performed--good enough to allow for intelligent review sustaining the amount of the fee award.
BLAWG BONUS: For SPAM gear and gifts, check out Hormel’s SPAM website.
Comments