City Blew The 30-Day Deadline, Thinking The Longer 90-Day Period Applied.
If you are involved in a de novo appeal of an administrative order in a superior court limited case, you need to be extra diligent in observing deadlines to file motions for fees and costs because the deadlines are smaller. Particular attention needs to be paid to the clerk’s processing of a Notice of Decision, because no formal judgment is necessary to trigger the fees/costs motion deadline. City of Duarte learned that the hard way in Mendoza v. City of Duarte, Case No. 24APLC00050 (L.A. County Appellate Div. of the Superior Court, filed Dec. 30, 2024 but posted as published on Jan. 27, 2025).
In Mendoza, City’s citation against plaintiff’s property was upheld in an administrative hearing. Plaintiff sought de novo review from the superior court in a limited case action, with the superior court again upholding the citation through a “Notice of Decision” mailed to the parties by the clerk with a file-stamped version of the decision. City filed a motion for fees and costs, but the superior court denied it because the motion was filed outside of 30 days from when the clerk served parties with the decision. City appealed to the superior court’s appellate division, which affirmed the lower court’s ruling on the untimeliness of the motion, rejecting City’s argument that the longer 90-day time period applied based only on its receipt of a copy of the “Notice of Decision.”
The untimeliness conclusion was fueled by the unique provisions relating to administrative appeals, where the issuance of a Notice of Decision rather than an order or judgment is the triggering event for the running of a fees/costs motion deadline. The Notice of Decision here was a final merits adjudication of the dispute, with the clerk sending notice of it along with a file-stamped copy of the decision itself. That was all the governing statutes and CRC provisions required, so the lower court’s untimeliness ruling was affirmed on appeal to the appellate division.
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