No Abuse Of Discretion In Basing Lodestar On Local Sonoma County Counsel Rates Rather Than Major Metropolitan San Francisco Bay Area Rates When Defendant Did Not Demonstrate Impracticability Or Impossibility Of Hiring Local Counsel.
The only question before the 1/2 DCA in Gentile v. Cohodes, Case No. A161721 (1st Dist., Div. 2 October 25, 2021) (unpublished), was whether the trial court – in its award of attorney fees to successfully SLAPPing defendant – abused its discretion by reducing the hourly rates charged by defendant’s attorneys.
Defendant claimed that the lodestar utilized by the trial court was improperly based on rates charged by law firms practicing in Sonoma County (where the case was brought) rather than firms in the San Francisco Bay area and was not based on similar work. The appellate panel found no abuse of discretion, rejected defendant’s arguments, and affirmed.
First, the ordinary rule in setting the lodestar, which is in the trial court’s discretion, is that the relevant geographic market for determining a reasonable hourly billing rate is the location where the trial court sits – unless the party claiming fees demonstrates that local counsel was unavailable or otherwise impracticable to hire, something not done in this case. Next, defendant bore the burden of demonstrating that the fees he sought were reasonable. However, defendant provided no evidence of rates specific to Sonoma County – leaving the trial court with no choice but to make its determination as to the reasonable rates based on its own familiarity with local billing rates for comparable legal work and on the evidence submitted by plaintiff related to Sonoma County rates.
Comments