Lack Of Hearing Reporter’s Transcript Hampered Review, But Attorney Efforts Benefitting Joint Tenants, Even If Attorney Only Formally Retained By One Tenant, Was Appropriate.
In Ahdoot v. Chernyavskiy, Case No. B303359 (2d Dist., Div. 2 Nov. 4, 2020) (unpublished), landlord lost an unlawful detainer on summary judgment to two married residents based on a defective notice to quit the premises. One tenant was in default at the time the eventually successful summary judgment motion was filed, but that default was vacated due to improper service. An attorney represented one of the tenants although counsel jointly filed a summary judgment to the benefit of both. Tenants moved for $32,140 in joint contractual attorney’s fees, with the lower court awarding $29,490 after a hearing. Landlord appealed, although providing no reporter’s transcript of the fee hearing.
The 2/2 DCA affirmed, rejecting both technical and reasonableness of fees challenges.
Landlord argued that one tenant’s “defaulted” status inflected the fee award based on the earlier summary grant when the tenant was in default, but the appellate court found that this did not void things and ultimately that tenant righted the situation by getting the default vacated. Besides, the right course was to attack the summary judgment grant, and landlord never appealed that judgment. Landlord next contended that it was improper to award fees to tenants jointly when only one tenant was really represented, but that argument was nixed because no legal authority was cited to support the position that a lower court had to parse out legal fees for tenants jointly sued in an unlawful detainer where the attorney’s efforts essentially benefited both of them. Also, landlord’s failure to provide a hearing transcript made it impossible to show what the lower court did constituted an abuse of discretion. Finally, it was not unfair to allow fee recovery for the joint tenants given that they were married and beat back an attempt to dispossess them from their residential unit. As such, no fee substantiation had to parse out efforts as between the two tenants.
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