Fee Award Of $4,498.46 Was Proper, Given Inflated Fee Request; Costs Of Proof Sanctions Of $11,852.50 Out Of A Requested $123,016.40 Was Not Improper.
As only Justice Wiley can do in his individual writing style, he reminds us in LCPFV, LLC v. Somatdary Inc., Case No. B325599 (2d Dist., Div. 8 Nov. 13, 2024) (published), that lower courts are gatekeepers in terms of entering reasonable default judgments, including those with inflated fee requests which will get rejected or scaled back as far as the fee recovery, more than a 90% reduction.
Over a dispute of about $48,000 over a rusty pipe repair, a default judgment was submitted for $1.1 million (inclusive of a $308,000 fee request and $500,000 punitive damages request). The lower court would have no part of this, because the defaulted party did not really resist, awarding $120,319.22 in a default judgment, which included attorney’s fees of $4,498.46. It also rebuffed an RFA costs of proof sanctions request of $123,016.40, awarding just $11,852.50.
All the awards were affirmed on appeal.
C’mon said the appellate court, the lower court is a gatekeeper on reasonableness and did a good job on entering much reduced awards. As far as the fees, here were the takeaways for reducing a $380,000 request down to under $5,000:
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- The award was against a “no show” defendant, so the matter was not vigorously contested;
- The award included duplicative work efforts which were not justified;
- The issues in the case were simple, not justifying a fee request for a complex matter;
- The fee request would be reduced based on the requesting party’s lack of candor in its overall default judgment submission; and
- The fee request was shocking in amount, justifying a drastic reduction (as made) or alright denial.
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