No Abuse Of Discretion In The Trial Court’s Implied Finding That The Total Time Tenant’s Attorneys Spent Working On The UD Case And Subsequent Appeal Was Reasonable Given The High Stakes Involved In The Litigation.
In NHP/PMB Burbank Medical, etc. v. Premiere Medical, etc., Case No. B299841 (2d Dist., Div. 7 December 14, 2020) (unpublished), prevailing commercial lease tenants (a medical center and doctor) in an unlawful detainer action were awarded $988,539 in attorney fees on remand. The 2/7 DCA, concluding landlord’s notices to quit were defective, had previously reversed the trial court’s initial judgment which found in favor of and awarded landlord $1,141,074.60 – comprised of $373,592.68 in rental fees, operating expenses and late charges, $624,207.97 in holdover damages, $53,121.16 in prejudgment interest, and $90,152.79 in attorney fees and costs.
On appeal, landlord argued that an award of nearly $1 million in attorney fees – for what it described as a routine unlawful detainer action – was absurd, that tenants failed to show the fees were incurred in the UD action and not the parties’ other related actions, that the award included sums for nonexistent or duplicative work, and that the fees were purposely inflated to approximate the amount of damages landlord anticipated tenants would be found liable for in the other related actions.
The 2/7 DCA agreed only with landlord’s contention regarding nonexistent or duplicative work – striking $14,125 from the award for such billing entries. The fees awarded to tenants covered the UD action as well as pre-litigation, post-judgment and appellate work related to the UD action. The panel found no abuse in discretion in the trial court’s implied finding that the total time expended by tenants’ attorneys was reasonable. The litigation involved much higher stakes for the tenants than it did the landlord – with medical center’s doctor declaring the unlawful detainer action “posed an existential threat to [his] business and seriously threatened his livelihood” and that if the monetary portion of the initial judgment had been enforced, “it would have been financially devastating to [him] and his family.” The trial court had correctly observed detailed time or billing records are not required under California law – accepting the declarations and summaries submitted by tenants’ counsel – which listed by broad category the time expended by each attorney. In fact, the panel observed, this method “has been upheld and even recommended, as ‘an especially helpful compromise between reporting hours in the aggregate (which is easy to review, but lacks informative detail) and generating a complete line-by-line billing report (which offers great detail, but tends to obscure the forest for the trees).’” (Syers Properties III, Inc. v. Rankin, 226 Cal.App.4th 691, 700 (2014) [discussed in our May 06, 2014 post].)
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