Employment, Multipliers, Substantiation Of Reasonableness Of Fees: FEHA Plaintiff Properly Awarded Fees At Reduced Hourly Rates, But Augmented By Hourly Rates For Enhancement Factors, And Then Correctly Denied Any Multiplier Beyond That

Almost $1.5 Million In Fees/Costs Sought, But Ultimate Affirmed Award Was About $649,000.

            The next case is an interesting example of how a trial judge’s decision to not credit prior fee awards to an employment contingency attorney was affirmed because there was not sufficient foundation to show the prior awards were similar to the case under scrutiny, but provided a positive enhancement to hourly rates to make up for the contingency risk factor.

            In Navarro v. 4Earth Farms, Inc., Case No. B288105 (2d Dist., Div. 5 Sept. 4, 2019) (unpublished), a FEHA plaintiff won a jury verdict of $309,310 against certain defendants.  Filling emboldened, plaintiff’s counsel then moved for attorney’s fees of $1,473,315, inclusive of a 2.0 positive multiplier, against the non-prevailing defendants, with hourly rates requested which ranged from $450-850 per hour.  Plaintiff’s counsel supported these rates with a list of 10 recent fee awards the firm had received from other courts.  The trial judge found the rates to be too high in a tentative decision, but he wanted to give further thought to the multiplier request.  Later, the lower court awarded lower hourly rates to plaintiff’s lawyers, but it enhanced them somewhat for “multiplier” factors after observing the case was not complex and was a single plaintiff case (mainly, for contingency risk).  Ultimately, it awarded $649,020.62 in fees and costs to plaintiff.

            The 2/5 DCA affirmed.

            Although acknowledging that prior fee awards could be relevant (Margolin v. Regional Planning Com., 134 Cal.App.3d 999, 1005-1006 (1982)), the appellate court affirmed the trial court’s conclusion that plaintiff’s counsel did not give an “apples to apples” comparison—the listed cases were class actions unlike the involved single plaintiff case with not as much complexity, such that the similarity nexus was missing.  Also, even though most trial judges simply award a multiplier after reductions, the trial judge here did not discount any hourly work effort tasks at all but simply applied a higher hourly rate as an enhancement—something perfectly proper under California law.  (Horsford v. Board of Trustees of California State University, 132 Cal.App.4^th 359, 394-395 (2005).)  So, the fact that he did not apply a multiplier, but enhanced the hourly rates beyond what he considered reasonable, was no abuse of discretion.