Aggrieved Party, Despite Significant Reduction, Appealed To No Avail.
We understand that no one likes to be hit with a significant fee award. However, when you get a significant reduction, think carefully about whether you want to appeal. That was the moral of CDC San Francisco LLC v. Webcor Construction, L.P., Case No. A163751 (1st Dist., Div. 1 Jan. 11, 2023) (unpublished).
What happened here was that plaintiff/appellant was hit with an adverse fee award of $855,438 after an unsuccessful appeal in a case where there was a contractual fees clause even though the prevailing parties sought $1,555,342 in fees. The award was a lower court reduction of 45% from the requested fees, after finding that appellate counsel’s hourly rates were excessive, and the hours claimed were grossly inflated in an appeal which was not a “bet-the-company” case. Plaintiff thought more should be reduced, but that did not occur on appeal.
Plaintiff wanted heightened scrutiny of the trial court’s reasoning under Kerkeles v. City of San Jose, 243 Cal.App.4th 88 (2015), but that was a federal civil rights case that was not congruent with California state law. Plaintiff then argued that the award was over ten times the amount awarded to trial counsel for fee work, but the appellate court rejected this argument because appellate work is more specialized, and plaintiff did not provide the amount of time/rates that its counsel charged for appellate work on a comparative level. The significant lower court reduction took the sting out of the argument that the fee award was too shocking in nature.
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