Judgment Enforcement/Settlement: Settlement Agreement Silence On Fees Did Not Prevent Postjudgment Collection Fee Entitlement Where Labor Code Section 218.5 Provided Statutory Basis For Fees

 

Postjudgment Fee Recovery Properly Allowed Against Settling Defendant.

     Khanna v. Sonasoft Corp., Case No. H040007 (6th Dist. June 30, 2016) (unpublished) involved a situation where parties settled a wage/hour dispute under Labor Code section 218.5 under a judicially-supervised settlement agreement which was silent on fee recovery.  However, the trial court did allow postjudgment fee recovery to plaintiff.

    This determination was affirmed on appeal.  The correct analysis, to the Sixth District, was that silence on the issue of fee recovery was not fatal, where a statute (such as Labor Code section 218.5, a fee-shifting provision in wage/hour cases) allowed for recovery.  Once this statutory basis was established, postjudgment collection fee efforts were compensable under Code of Civil Procedure section 685.040.

   BLOG OBSERVATION—The result in this case was similar to the one reached by the 1/1 DCA in Sanger v. Ahn, an unpublished decision we discussed in our June 29, 2016 post.