Consumer Statutes: $296,055 Fee Award To Prevailing Lemon Law Vehicle Plaintiff Was Not Disproportionate Or Shocking When Jury Awarded $101,909.52 In Damages

Trial Judge Did Fashion An Award Less Than The $413,866.50 Fee Request.

            Lemon law cases under the Song-Beverly Act can lead to significant fee exposure given a fee-shifting provision liberally interpreted to further the remedial nature of the Act in favor of vehicle purchasers.  That large fee exposure happened here, much to the chagrin of the well-known defendant in Cofield v. Kia Motors America, Inc., Case Nos. F074977/F075811 (5^th Dist. Aug. 23, 2019) (unpublished).

            Plaintiff owner of a 2010 Kia Forte obtained total damages of $101,909.52 (inclusive of a civil penalty of $67,939.68) against defendant after a jury trial.  Plaintiff then moved for fees under the Song-Beverly Act, requesting $413,866.60 (lodestar of $344,888.75 plus a 1.2 positive multiplier).  The trial judge awarded $296,055, after reducing for duplicative time (dual lead trial attorneys) and denying the enhancement request.  Kia appealed.

            The Fifth District affirmed.

            The appellate panel rejected the argument that the fee award was disproportionate to the $101,909.52 in damages assessed by the jury.  Besides that, there is no rigid proportionality requirement in civil rights cases, which case law provides an excellent analogy to the remedial purposes under California’s lemon law available to vehicle purchasers.

            It also swatted away the argument that the fee awarded “shocked the conscience.”  Its proportionality analysis did away with this contention, not to mention that the trial judge did scale back the request quite a bit.

            Kia then argued that it offered to settle for $25,730.44 over 18 months before trial.  However, that argument did not resonate because that would not come close to covering the admitted purchase price of the vehicle as financed.