Additional Defendants Were Unified In Interest With Other Defendants Subject To The Fee Award.
To recover attorney’s fees under the private attorney general statute, CCP § 1021.5, the plaintiff must recover against “opposing parties.” Taft v. Salinas, Case No. D081025 (4th Dist., Div. 1 Nov. 30, 2023) (unpublished) considered the scope of that language where all defendants seriously contested the case and were unified in interest, but the lower court denied fees against certain defendants because it did not consider them to be alter egos.
Taft involved a case by a plaintiff against certain puppy stores and their owners for retail sales of non-rescue puppies which were alleged to come from breeding mills. Plaintiff obtained a preliminary injunction, although plaintiff dismissed without prejudice after defendants moved to compel arbitration. Plaintiff moved for attorney’s fees under Civil Code § 1717 and CCP § 1021.5, with the lower court awarding $46,500 under the private attorney general against the puppy stores but not against the owners. Plaintiff appealed on the narrow ground that the omitted defendants should have been liable for the private attorney general fee award.
Plaintiff won on appeal. However, there was a jurisdictional issue to be resolved before the merits were reached.
Defendants argued that the post-dismissal fee award was not appealable after the dismissal without prejudice. The 4/1 DCA disagreed, finding such an award was no different from a post-dismissal routine costs award found appealable (and found persuasive by this panel through its reasoning) in Gassner v. Stasa, 30 Cal.App.5th 346, 354-355 (2018).
On the merits, the appellate court found that the omitted defendants were “opposing parties” responsible for the fee award under CCP § 1021.5 because they vigorously contested at all stages of the case and they were unified in interest with the defendants initially found liable for the fee award.
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