Consumer Statutes, Reasonableness Of Fees: 4/2 DCA Affirms Trial Court’s Almost $400,000 Haircut To Prevailing Song-Beverly Plaintiffs’ Fee Request

The Panel Found No Abuse Of Discretion In Trial Court’s Finding That The Hourly Rate And Number Of Hours Requested Were Excessive For A Case That Was Not Complex And Involved Little, If Any, Law And Motion Work.

            In Mallonee v. Toyota Motor Sales, Case No. E075088 (4^th Dist., Div. 2 March 10, 2022) (unpublished), Song-Beverly plaintiffs filed an unlimited action concerning a Prius they had purchased that they believed to have electrical issues. Following an eight day trial, the jury awarded plaintiffs the $19,559.88 their counsel argued for in closing arguments, which consisted of $6,519.96 (representing the amount plaintiffs paid toward the car before it was totaled in an accident) and a Song-Beverly penalty of $13,039.92.  Afterward, plaintiffs moved for $307,316 in fees, plus a multiplier of .4 – for a total of $430,242.40 in requested fees – and submitted time records showing that nine attorneys spent about 780 hours on the case, and paralegals/law clerks spent another 143.4 hours on the case.  However, the trial court found the work performed in the case did not justify the fee request – given the case was not complex and involved little, if any, law and motion work – and awarded $40,875 after reducing the number of attorneys necessary and reasonable for the case to two, reducing their and the paralegal’s hourly rates, and reducing the attorneys’ reasonably expended hours to a combined total of 135 and the paralegal’s to 25 hours.

            Plaintiffs appealed – arguing that the trial court improperly reduced the fee award based on the amount of the jury award.  Not so, said the 4/2 DCA. First, trial courts have the discretion to significantly reduce fee awards or award no fees at all when a fee request is unreasonably excessive.  (Chavez v. City of Los Angeles, 47 Cal.4th 970, 990 (2010); Christian Research Institute v. Alnor, 165 Cal.App.4th 1315, 1318-1319 (2008); Guillory v. Hill, 36 Cal.App.5th 802, 815 (2019); and 569 East County Boulevard LLC v. Backcountry Against the Dump, Inc., 6 Cal.App.5th 426, 432 fn. 7 (2016).)  Second, although the trial court had commented that it was “bothered” that the case should have been a limited jurisdiction case, the comment was not a final finding and could not impeach the trial court’s written ruling (Key v. Tyler, 34 Cal.App.5^th 505, 539, fn. 16 (2019)), and the written ruling confirmed that the fee award was reduced because the trial court found it to be excessive.