Appellate Court Rejected Election Of Remedies Argument Where Plaintiffs Prevailed On Both Contract And Tort Claims With Overlapping, Yet Different, Facts.
Mobile home park/related property management defendants had reached an earlier settlement with two mobile home residents, with the settlement agreement having a contractual fees clause for a breach limited to contract claims. Subsequently, the mobile home residents became plaintiffs, suing the prior settling defendants for breach of the settlement agreement as well as tort claims when the residents’ mobile homes were removed from the park without their knowledge or consent. The jury was not pleased with this conduct, awarding one resident $477,000 in compensatory damages, the other resident $468,000 in compensatory damages, and $4 million in punitive damages to each. Later, the plaintiffs moved to recover $1,790,984 in attorney’s fees, with the lower court awarding them $1,487,990.30 after eliminating fee work on non-contract claims.
Defendants, in Belanger v. Biggs, Case Nos. B296853/B297614 (2d Dist., Div. 3 Dec. 24, 2020) (unpublished), appealed both the merits and fees award. Except for reversal of a fraudulent conveyance count based on lack of harm, the compensatory/punitive verdicts and fee award were affirmed in entirety.
The defense argued that the fee award was precluded based on election of remedies, contending that plaintiffs had to choose between emotional distress/punitive damages recourse or contractually based relief. The appellate court disagreed. The problem here is that the tort claims, while involving some overlapping facts with the contract claims, did involve independent and different facts such that no election needed to be made because the claims were not inconsistent.
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