Judge Thomas Falls, Case 19PSCV00315 2022-07-29 Tentative Ruling

The Court may change tentative rulings at any time. Therefore, attorneys are advised to check this website to determine if any changes or updates have been made to the tentative ruling. Counsel may submit on the tentative rulings by calling the clerk in Dept. R at 909-802-1117 before 8:30 the morning of the hearing.

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Plaintiff EDUARDO FLORES GARNICA’s (“Plaintiff”) Motion for Attorney Fees, Costs, and Expenses (“Motion”)

Plaintiff EDUARDO FLORES GARNICA’s Motion for Attorney Fees, Costs, and Expenses is GRANTED in the reduced amount of $40,005.00.

On April 5, 2019, Plaintiff filed suit against Defendant Ford Motor Company for violations of the SBA after his 2016 Ford F-150 developed defects during the warranty period.

On November 16, 2020, Plaintiff filed a motion to compel further responses and documents to Plaintiff’s Request for Production of Documents, Set No. One, Nos. 16, 18-23, and 59-61, on which the court on March 19, 2021 ruled as follows: Plaintiff Eduardo Flores Garnica’s Motion to Compel Further Responses and Documents to Plaintiff’s Request for Production of Documents, Set No. One is DENIED in part (i.e., as to Nos. 59-61) and otherwise GRANTED. Defendant is ordered to produce verified, code-compliant responses without objection within 60 days, subject to the limitations contained herein.

On February 22, 2022, Defendant filed a ‘Notice of Acceptance of Ford’s Code of Civil Procedure Section 998 Offer.’

CCP section 1794(d) provides a prevailing buyer the right “to recover as part of the judgment a sum equal to the aggregate amount of costs and expenses, including attorney’s fees based on actual time expended, determined by the court to have been reasonably incurred by the buyer in connection with the commencement and prosecution of such action.” In enacting section 1794, “the Legislature envisioned an objective, nonarbitrary, and easy to administer calculation of attorney fees based on the ‘lodestar’ method (reasonable hours and rates plus a multiplier) ‘in order to fix the fee at the fair market value for the legal services provided.” (Reynolds v. Ford Motor Co. (2020) 47 Cal.App.5th 1105, 1117.) “Such an approach anchors the trial court’s analysis to an objective determination of the value of the attorney’s services, ensuring that the amount awarded is not arbitrary.” (Id.)

In awarding fees, “the court's analysis must begin with the ‘actual time expended, determined by the court to have been reasonably incurred.’” (Hanna v. Mercedez-Benz USA, LLC (2019) 36 Cal.App.5th 493, 510.) The “prevailing party has the burden of showing that the fees incurred were reasonably necessary to the conduct of the litigation and were reasonable in amount.” (Robertson v. Fleetwood Travel Trailers of California, Inc. (2006) 144 Cal.App.4th 785, 817-18.) The trial court “must initially determine the actual time expended.” (Mikhaeilpoor v. BMW of North America (2020) 48 Cal.App.5th 240, 247.) The court must then “ascertain whether under all the circumstances of the case the amount of actual time expended and the monetary charge being made for the time expended are reasonable” relative to the “complexity of the case and procedural demands, the attorney skill exhibited and the results achieved,” among other factors. (Id.)

Generally, the prevailing party bears “the burden of showing that the fees incurred were . . . ‘reasonably necessary to the conduct of the litigation,’ and were ‘reasonable in amount,’” and a reduced fee award is appropriate when this burden is not carried. (Id.) In the contingency context, the award under section 1794 “‘controls what the losing defendant must pay,¿not what the prevailing plaintiff must pay his lawyer. What a plaintiff may be bound to pay and what an attorney is free to collect under a fee agreement¿are not necessarily measured by the ‘reasonable attorney’s fee’ that a defendant must pay pursuant to a court order.’” (Reynolds v. Ford Motor Co.¿(2020) 47 Cal.App.5th 1105.) While the fee agreement “is relevant and may be considered” in fixing an award of reasonable fees, reviewing the agreement is not required and the agreement is not before the Court in this case. (Glaviano v. Sacramento City Unified School Dist. (2018) 22 Cal.App.5th 744, 748; see Shahian Decl., para. 42 (describing terms of agreement).)

Plaintiff seeks the court to take judicial notice of 23 exhibits, mainly court rulings in lemon law cases. Defendant objects on the grounds that, inter alia, “a generic description of the area of law that the cases involved is inadequate to establish relevance for purposes of a request for judicial notice.” Though Defendant is correct that Plaintiff did not meet its burden in describing how the cases are relevant aside aside from the fact that they are lemon law cases (See Cal. Evid. Code § 453), the court on its own takes judicial notice of the exhibits that are records of state court. (Cal. Evid. Code § 452, subd., (d).)

Plaintiff brings forth the motion seeking attorney fees, costs, and expenses, in the total amount of $69,334.61 (comprised of the following: $58,157.90 in attorney fees, $6,176.71 in recoverable costs and expenses, and reservation for an additional $5,000.00 for Plaintiff’s counsel to review Defendant’s Opposition, draft the Reply brief, and attend the hearing on this issue).

Plaintiff’s Counsel, Julian Moore, has a $450 hourly rate. Plaintiff argues this is reasonable given his experience and qualifications. (Motion p. 7.)

In opposition, Defendant argues that the court should reduce Plaintiff’s attorney’s claimed hourly rates to a reasonable amount. (Opp. p. 9.)

Here, the court agrees with Defendant that a $450 hourly rate is unreasonable. Plaintiff, for example, cites to a Case No. BC466626 entitled Behnam Khani v. Ford Motor Company for the proposition that the hourly fees are reasonable. However, Khani is distinguishable from the facts of this case. In Khani, the court determined the case was complex “due to the disqualification motion and the subsequent appeals.” (Moore Decl., Ex. 3.) Accordingly, while in Khani many attorneys, notably partners, were needed to work on the house, here, routine type of work could have been handled by a junior associate. Plaintiff also cites to Case No. BC548652 entitled Mahyar Derakshanian et al. v. BMW of North America, LLC to support its position that its hourly rate was reasonable. However, there, the issue of hourly rates was not discussed but merely affirmed; thus, it is inapposite. Plaintiff also relies on Caplan et al. v. FCA US, LLC. There the court determined that the attorney’s billing rate of $595 per hour was reasonable because not only did the attorney have experience as a litigator but also experience “with automotive technologies.” (Moore Decl., Ex. 11.) Thus, while the attorney there appeared to not only have significant experience litigating lemon law cases, the attorney also possessed knowledge of the technical aspect. A review of the other cases Plaintiff cited does not provide an analysis as to why the hourly rates were reasonable. All in all, this case was a standard lemon law case from start to finish raising standard lemon law issues.

Therefore, as this decision lies within this court’s discretion, the court finds the requested hourly rate is inflated, and it reduces it to $350/hour.[2]

Plaintiff’s fee recovery is based on the 128.7 hours spent by his attorneys litigating this case through this fee/cost motion. Plaintiff argues the number of hours expended is reasonable because “Plaintiff’s counsel’s vigorous efforts in this matter were prompted by Defendant’s (1) denial of liability (including its denial of civil penalty liability); (2) refusal to provide the relevant, discoverable evidence that would have established its full liability under the Lemon Law; and (3) refusal to settle the case or make a reasonable offer of settlement during litigation. (See generally Moore Decl.) As such, Plaintiff was forced to incur attorney fees by (1) vigorously pressing to enforce Plaintiff’s discovery rights; and (3) obtaining Defendant’s repair documents by diligently prosecuting Plaintiff’s case.” (Motion p. 10.)

In Opposition, Defendant argues that “[f]irst, many of Plaintiff’s attorneys’ time entries are block-billed, which is improper. Second, Plaintiff’s attorneys billed an excessive amount of time to handle routine tasks. Third, they billed for unnecessary tasks.” (Opp. p. 5.)

As to block billing, the court disagrees with Defendant’s arguments that Plaintiff has inappropriately block billed the time entries and finds that the objected-to entries appropriately describe the tasks completed by Plaintiff’s counsel.

That said, the court agrees that 128.7 hours spent on the instant case is unreasonable for the following three (3) reasons.

First, based on the docket, there was only one substantive discovery motion. As to this discovery motion, the court final ruling undermines Plaintiff’s contention that Defendant refused to provide the relevant, discoverable evidence because the court only granted the motion in part.

Second, the billing records reflect billing for duplicative work in the total of 3.4 hours. Plaintiff in Opposition explains that such billing was audited, but the billing records indicate otherwise. Therefore, hours for duplicative work are reduced by one half to 1.7 hours. (See Hensley v. Eckerhart (1983) 461 U.S. 424 [confirming that courts have the power to refuse attorney fee awards based on hours that are “excessive, redundant, or otherwise unnecessary”].)

Third, as for research, the court agrees with Defendant that Plaintiff billed for unnecessary tasks, notably billed $4,840 for 12.1 hours of research into technical service bulletins and records from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (“NHTSA”) regarding alleged complaints by owners of other vehicles, other claims, and other complaints by other consumers. As Plaintiff does not rebut this in its Reply, the court reduces the total billed hours by an additional 12.1 hours.

Based on the foregoing, the court reduces the hourly billing rate to $350 and reduces the billed hours by 13.8 hours. Therefore, the court awards Plaintiff fees in the amount of

$40,005.00 [calculated as follows: 128.7 hours – 1.7 hours – 12.1 hours =114.3 x $350 hourly rate].

[1] At the outset, Defendant argues that Plaintiff is seeking a multiplier, but Plaintiff does not request a multiplier. Therefore, to the extent that Defendant avers Plaintiff’s attorney fees should be reduced because a multiplier is unwarranted, the court will not address the argument.

[2] The court finds the rulings of other Judges supports its decision to reduce the hourly rate. (See John Tseng v. Volkswagen Group of America, Inc. (18PSCV04553) [“The court finds $625 to be an excessive rate and uses its discretion to reduce the billing rate to $400/hour to account for the routine litigation tasks (e.g., this case did not involve any depositions, extensive motion practice, or trial preparation). In the court’s experience, individual lemon law cases are cookie-cutter, volume and template-driven non-complex matters, usually not justifying higher rates for most of the work until genuine pre-trial preparation, the trial itself, or, in the lead-up to those events, an unusually complicated or critical motion or hearing, none of which was shown here. Given the relatively low stakes in individual lemon law cases, but which take up a disproportionate amount of the court’s time, billing judgment should be exercised reasonably throughout the handling of the case to arrive at mutually acceptable settlements without need for the court’s intervention.”]; see also Hernandez v. UAG Southbay et al. (BC697925) [“There are other reasons why the requested hourly rates are somewhat inflated. This case was a standard lemon law case from start to finish, raising standard lemon law issues. Moreover, the fraud claim turned out not to be viable, narrowing the issues to those of a standard breach of warranty case. In light of the foregoing, the Court finds that it is appropriate to apply a slightly lower-than-average hourly rate to all the attorney hours billed in this case.² The Court sets that rate at $350/hour.”].)