Trope Generally Barred Fees, Plus Husband Could Not Show His Financial Interest Allowing For CCP § 1021.5 Fees.
In Honchariw v. FJM Private Mortgage Fund, LLC, Case No. A169447 (1st Dist., Div. 3 Dec. 20, 2024) (unpublished), husband represented himself and his wife, although he had no evidence of an attorney-client relationship with his wife, against a lender, winning an appellate reversal of a post-arbitration award confirming an arbitration result involving default interest which was ultimately determined to be a penalty in a prior appellate court decision. Husband then moved for nearly $600,000 in attorney’s fees based on lender document contractual clauses and the private attorney general statute (CCP § 1021.5).
The lower court denied the request, a conclusion affirmed by the 1/3 DCA.
On the contractual fee front, the problem was that husband could not surmount the obstacle that his efforts and those for his wife were barred because he represented himself in pro per, falling within the Trope v. Katz prohibition. Although an attorney-client relationship could exist between spouses, he failed to establish one and did not show that any extra time was spent in representing his wife. On the § 1021.5 argument, husband did not show that he and his wife did not have a large financial incentive to justify broader fees: they would have been liable for $30,000 in default interest, they would have been liable for fees and costs to lender had it won, and they sought $5 million in punitive damages in the overall lawsuit. Although the fees and costs “incurred” were significant (if allowable, but they were not), no burden by them was shown as far as financial costs given that husband represented both and had no separate indicia that he represented wife in a true attorney-client relationship—another way of saying that they could not prove any allowable financial burden based on the self-representation.
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