Riskin v. Downtown Los Angeles Property Owners Association (Mar. 17, 2022, B309814) __ Cal.App.5th __ [2022 WL 805377]
Plaintiff filed a request under the California Public Records Act seeking various categories of documents from a business improvement district. The trial court ordered production of emails consisting of 20 sentences in total. The plaintiff then moved for $123,199.11 in attorney fees and costs. The trial court concluded it had no discretion to deny plaintiff attorney fees under the CPRA because the statute provides that the prevailing party “shall” be entitled to a recovery of attorney fees. The trial court awarded plaintiff $71,075.75 in fees and the defendant appealed.
The Court of Appeal reversed in a published opinion, relying on prior case law holding that a trial court has discretion under the CPRA to deny a plaintiff attorney fees when the documents ordered produced are minimal or insignificant. The court also relied on cases involving other statutory schemes with mandatory attorney fee provisions where courts have held that trial courts retain discretion to deny fees when the plaintiff obtains a result “so minimal or insignificant to justify finding it did not prevail.” The court remanded the case to the trial court for it to exercise its discretion in the first instance whether to deny fees.
The court’s decision affirms the proposition that even when attorney fee statutes prescribe a mandatory attorney fee award to the prevailing party, trial courts retain discretion to award no fees if the victory is of little or no value, and that trivial victories may not be used to obtain substantial attorney fee awards.
Horvitz & Levy LLP represented the defendant on appeal.
