SLAPP: No Abuse Of Discretion Where Trial Court Awarded Each Of Three Successful SLAPPing Defendants Separate Attorneys’ Fees.

Plaintiffs’ Claims of Duplicative Efforts, Excessive Hourly Rates, And Inefficiencies Were Not Supported By The Record.

            In Truong v. Philhower, Case Nos. GO55054 et al. (4^th Dist., Div. 3 June 26, 2020) (unpublished), two plaintiffs asserted separately up to ten claims against each of three defendants for malicious prosecution.  These nearly sixty claims stemmed from causes of action alleged in an underlying action against numerous defendants.  In the underlying action, the two plaintiffs in this case had prevailed against the causes of action through dismissals, demurrers or the jury’s verdict.  The three defendants in this case were the underlying action’s plaintiff/his company, plaintiff’s lead counsel, and co-counsel.

            After successfully SLAPPing plaintiffs’ malicious prosecution action, defendants were separately awarded a combined total of about $266,575 in mandatory attorney fees pursuant to Code Civ. Proc. § 425.16(c)(1).  Plaintiffs appealed the dismissal of their complaints and attorney fees awards.

            In an opinion authored by Justice Goethals, the 4/3 DCA affirmed.  Under the two-step analysis for the governing standard for granting an anti-SLAPP motion, as recently set out by the 4/3 DCA in Mobile Medical Services, etc. v. Rajaram, 241 Cal.App.4th 164, 170 (2015), the appellate panel concluded defendants’ pursuit of the underlying action was a protected activity and that plaintiffs failed to meet their burden of establishing a probability of prevailing on the claim. 

            As to the attorney fees awards, plaintiffs challenged the amount awarded to each defendant – claiming duplicative efforts between the defendants, excessive hourly rates, and that legal work performed by defendants could have been done more efficiently.  However, there was no support for these claims in the record.   Rather, the record established that defendants did not charge to draft papers where the template was created by another defendant’s counsel, billing rates were well within the range for comparable work in the area, and the trial court scrutinized the attorneys’ billing records, added a $25/hour multiplier for contingency work where appropriate, and made reductions where appropriate.