Fee Entitlement Was Justified Under CCP § 685.070(a).
After obtaining a judgment to enforce an arbitration award, judgment creditors must have been miffed when the trial court denied requests for post-judgment enforcement fee recovery. The lower court decided that the lack of an express provision allowing for post-judgment fee recovery was dispositive.
The appellate court disagreed and reversed in Sanger v. Ahn, CaseNo. A145714 (1st Dist., Div. 1 June 28, 2016) (unpublished).
Respondent argued that the appeal was moot because appellants accepted payment in satisfaction of judgment way after moving for and being denied fees. Not so, because this would only be true if they had accepted payment as satisfaction before moving for fees. Appellants took a partial satisfaction, anyway, but it was after requesting fees, so the fee denial was not moot.
On the merits, the reviewing panel determined that CCP § 685.070(a) did allow for post-judgment enforcement fee recovery, a statutory basis which trumped the rule that a judgment extinguished a contractual basis for fee recovery unless the judgment had a further fees clause in it. Nothing in section 685.070(a) indicated that post-judgment fees had to be expressly provided for in the judgment, and the Court of Appeal was unwilling to engraft this as a new requirement under the statute.
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