Judge: Mark C. Kim, Case: 21LBCV00560, Date: 2022-08-18 Tentative Ruling

Case Number: 21LBCV00560    Hearing Date: August 18, 2022    Dept: S27

1.     Background Facts

Plaintiff, Cha, Cha, Cha, Inc. filed this action against Defendants, Organic Group, LLC, LG Labs, LLC, Green Nine Group, LLC, United Capital Holdings, Inc., Payan Sadeghi, and Shervin Azodill for unlawful detainer.  Plaintiff alleges Defendants agreed to pay rent in the amount of $22,301/month, have overdue rent in the amount of $179,190.80, were served with a three-day notice to pay or quit, and failed to cure their deficiency. 

 

2.     Motion for Attorneys’ Fees

  1. Procedural History

Plaintiff filed the complaint on 10/25/21.  Defendants filed a motion to quash and demurrer on 12/06/21; after ex parte proceedings to expedite the hearing, the Court granted the motion to quash in part and denied it in part on 2/01/22, and overruled the demurrer.  On 2/14/22, the individual defendants filed a demurrer to the complaint; after ex parte proceedings to expedite the hearing, on 4/04/22 the Court sustained the demurrer without leave to amend.  On 3/25/22, all of the defendants filed a summary judgment motion, which was denied on 4/28/22.  On 5/29/22, Plaintiff voluntarily dismissed the remainder of the action. 

 

  1. Parties’ Positions

Defendants move to recover their attorneys’ fees as prevailing parties in the action, contending the parties’ contract has an attorneys’ fees provision that entitles them to recover their fees.  Plaintiff opposes the motion, arguing fees are not available as to the entity defendants, the billing records submitted with the moving papers are deficient, the hourly rate and number of hours claimed are unreasonable, and fees should be denied completely due to the unreasonableness of the demand and/or reduced dramatically. 

 

  1. Whose Fees are Sought?

In the notice of motion, only the individual defendants seek to recover fees.  In the moving brief, however, §B argues that “all defendants” are prevailing parties and should be awarded their fees.  Plaintiff correctly notes that the entity defendants were voluntarily dismissed prior to trial, and are clearly not “prevailing parties” in the action.  Because the notice of motion ONLY seeks fees on behalf of the individual defendants, and because the entity defendants were voluntarily dismissed, the Court will only rule on the motion for fees brought by the individual defendants.

 

  1. Prevailing Parties

Plaintiff, at page 2, bullet point 2 of its opposition brief, contends the individual defendants are not parties to the lease, but are guarantors under a separate agreement, which is why the demurrer was sustained.  It argues the guarantee was not the subject of this action.  Plaintiff never raises this issue again in the brief, and it is not clear exactly what Plaintiff is arguing here.  Plaintiff does not contend the individual defendants did not have a contract with an attorneys’ fees provision in it, and did not prevail on the contract.  The Court therefore finds the individual defendants are prevailing parties in the action for purposes of attorneys’ fees.

 

  1. Allocation of Fees

This case involved four entity defendants who are not entitled to recover their fees, plus two individual defendants who are entitled to recover their fees.  The question before the Court on this motion is how the fees should be allocated between the prevailing and non-prevailing defendants. 

 

Pursuant to Hill v. Affirmed Housing Group (2014) 226 Cal.App.4th 1192, 1197, when the liability of the parties is so factually interrelated that it would have been impossible to separate the activities into compensable and non-compensable time units, the Court does not have to apportion the fees between the prevailing and non-prevailing parties. 

 

Defendants argue, in their points and authorities, that all of the fees incurred, with the exception of $2514.49, were incurred for the purpose of representing all of the defendants’ interests in the action.  They cite to ¶22 of Counsel’s declaration to support this contention.  However, ¶22 of the declaration avers that $1602.49 was billed for the corporate defendants, and the remainder was billed for all defendants jointly.  It is not clear what amount Defendants concede was solely for the benefit of the entity defendants.  Plaintiff, in opposition to the motion, contends all discovery it served was served solely on the entity defendants, and only the entity defendants propounded discovery.  Defendants cannot explain, then, why they are billing 71.53 hours in connection with discovery, and all of that billing was for “all defendants.” 

  1. Amount of Fees

Compounding the above issue, the fees themselves appear to be inflated and are not easily calculated.  Defense Counsel, at ¶20 of his declaration, sets forth the hourly rates of the attorneys who worked on the case, all of which appear to be reasonable.  However, at ¶21, Counsel simply sets forth large blocks of hours that were billed on various tasks, with no indication of which attorney worked on the tasks, the billing rate associated with them, etc.  Counsel attached the billing as Exhibit B to the moving papers, but blocked out the descriptions of tasks completely, such that the Court cannot review the tasks and determine if they were reasonable or not. 

 

The Court has wide discretion in determining the reasonable amount of fees to be awarded.  The Court is inclined to award 2/6, or 1/3, of the fees claimed.  The Court is doing this both because only two of the six jointly represented defendants are prevailing parties in the action, and the Court cannot determine which fees were for which defendants, and also because the billing itself it difficult to examine and appears to be inflated. 

 

The Court therefore awards $31,520.59 in attorneys’ fees, which is 1/3 of the claimed $94,561.77. 

 

  1. Costs

Defense Counsel’s declaration mentions costs.  It is not clear if costs are being sought by way of the motion.  Defendants are free to file a memorandum of costs per the Rules of Court, but the Court is not adjudicating any issue relating to costs in connection with this motion for attorneys’ fees.

 

Defendants are ordered to give notice.

 

Parties who intend to submit on this tentative must send an email to the court at gdcdepts27@lacourt.org indicating intention to submit on the tentative as directed by the instructions provided on the court website at www.lacourt.org.  If the department does not receive an email indicating the parties are submitting on the tentative and there are no appearances at the hearing, the motion may be placed off calendar.  If a party submits on the tentative, the party’s email must include the case number and must identify the party submitting on the tentative. If any party does not submit on the tentative, the party should make arrangements to appear remotely at the hearing on this matter.