After Ten Years Of Litigation, Tenant Only Received A $56,000 Net Recovery—Not Exactly A Win When All Of The Attorney Efforts Are Considered!
Christie v. Ridge, Case No. B259189 (2d Dist., Div. 6 February 6, 2019) (unpublished), although unpublished, is a nice reminder of how costly litigation is and how both litigants winning attorney’s fees can see it go away where there is no fee entitlement or a CCP § 998 offer is deemed invalid by the reviewing court.
The underlying dispute was a brouhaha about the disposition of personal property left by a tenant after a landlord evicted tenant from a luxury home in Westlake Village. (The personal property was valued at $4 million, nice by our standards—we don’t have personal property of this nature.) After 7-10 years of litigation, tenant prevailed on negligence/conversions claims, and landlord prevailed on a breach of contract cross-claim. That resulted in dueling fee requests, producing fee awards in favor of each. The trial judge awarded $220,000 in fees to tenant and $533,225 in fees to landlord (with the fees to landlord stemming from rejection of certain CCP § 998 offers). Everything was appealed.
Even after procedural dismissals, this appeal was “sour grapes” for both sides. The fee awards went POOF! and tenant only had a meager $56,000 net recovery after 10 years of litigation even though the trial judge originally found differently on net recovery. But, since we are a fee blog, we focus on the fee reversals.
So, for tenant, the $220,00 fee award went away because no attorney’s fees are recoverable on a conversion claim. (Haines v. Parra, 193 Cal.App.3d 1553, 1559 (1987).) Although tenant argued that it was seeking fees under a claim brought under Civil Code section 1965(e)(3) (which does allow discretionary fees to a prevailing party in a case where a landlord wrongfully retains personal property), the problem here is that the judgment was not entered on this claim, but only on the conversion claim carrying no fee exposure. So, reversed.
For landlord, the problem was that the landlord group’s section 998 offer was invalid. It conditioned the offer on a release of claims which were not part of the lawsuit, because the parties had 10 other litigations at issue elsewhere—an overbroad release which cannot be sustained under section 998. So, reversed also. (BLOG OBSERVATION—The 2/6 DCA did suggest that Civil Code section 1542 waivers of known and unknown claims, even just related to the claims in the lawsuit, could be problematical language if not drafted with precision—so, beware when fashioning 998 offers!)
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