Page 1
S.C. Curbs Attorney-Fee Awards Under Political Reform Act
Guerrero Writes That Successful Defendants Must Show Groundlessness of Action Against Them
By a MetNews Staff Writer
The California Supreme Court held yesterday that a prevailing defendant in an action under a provision of the Political Reform Act of 1974 may not be awarded attorney fees unless the lawsuit was “objectively without foundation.”
At issue was the meaning of Government Code §91003. It provides, in connection with actions for injunctive relief to enforce provisions of the act:
“The court may award to a plaintiff or defendant who prevails his costs of litigation, including reasonable attorney’s fees.”
Mackey’s Award
Div. Eight of the Court of Appeal for this district on March 19, 2021, affirmed an order by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Malcom Mackey awarding $862,736.60 in such fees to the prevailing defendants in an action over the alleged failure to disclose the true identities of entities supporting a Redondo Beach ballot measure. Justice John Shepard Wiley Jr. wrote the opinion.
He pointed to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1994 opinion in Fogerty v. Fantasy, Inc. which disapproved opinions holding prevailing defendants to a higher standard than successful plaintiffs in seeking an award of fees. Wiley wrote:
“The statute here says the trial court may award to a plaintiff or defendant who prevails his costs of litigation, including reasonable attorney fees. The statute means what it says. As the Fogerty decision put it, prevailing plaintiffs and prevailing defendants are to be treated alike, and attorney fees are to be awarded to prevailing parties only as a matter of the trial court’s discretion….
“We therefore uphold the trial court’s exercise of its discretion to award attorney fees to the defendants, who were unquestionably the prevailing parties.”
High Court’s Interpretation
That the defendants were the prevailing parties was not enough, Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero wrote. She declared:
“The question we address here is whether a trial court’s discretion to award fees to a prevailing defendant is coextensive with its discretion to award fees to a prevailing plaintiff. The text of the statute does not specify the standard that should govern an award of fees to either prevailing party. Nonetheless, in order to effectuate the purpose of encouraging private litigation enforcing the Political Reform Act, we interpret section 91003(a) to impose an asymmetrical standard, which constrains the trial court’s discretion to award attorney’s fees to a prevailing defendant.”
She said, quoting language in her court’s May 4, 2015 opinion in Williams v. Chino Valley Independent Fire District:
“Consistent with the standard adopted in similar contexts, including the enforcement of civil rights and fair housing and employment laws, a prevailing defendant under the Political Reform Act ‘should not be awarded fees and costs unless the court finds the action was objectively without foundation when brought, or the plaintiff continued to litigate after it clearly became so.’…Because the Court of Appeal affirmed an award of attorney’s fees under section 91003(a) in this case without first considering whether this standard had been met, we reverse the judgment and remand for further proceedings.”
The new chief justice placed reliance on the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1978 opinion in Christiansburg Garment Co. v. EEOC which placed a restriction on awards of attorney fees to successful defendants in suits in Civil Rights Act of 1964, holding:
“[A] plaintiff should not be assessed his opponent’s attorney’s fees unless a court finds that his claim was frivolous, unreasonable, or groundless, or that the plaintiff continued to litigate after it clearly became so.”
Wiley’s Contrary View
Wiley had expressed the view that Christiansburg was inapposite. He said the nation’s high court in Fogerty restricted the holding in that case to civil rights actions, observing that “[o]ftentimes, in the civil rights context, impecunious ‘private attorney general’ plaintiffs can ill afford to litigate their claims against defendants with more resources.”
The Fogerty decison contrasted that with the situation in other types of cases, Wiley noted. The one at hand was brought under the Copyright Act.
Fogerty quoted a District Court opinion as saying that “[e]ntities which sue for copyright infringement as plaintiffs can run the gamut from corporate behemoths to starving artists; the same is true of prospective copyright infringement defendants.:
Wiley commented:
“The statute in this case is not like the statute in Christiansburg. It is more like the one in Fogerty.
“California election law disputes are more like the ordinary civil litigation setting in Fogerty: generalizations about plaintiffs and defendants are doubtful. This is true in this case and as a general matter.”
Guerrero’s Opinion
Rejecting that reasoning, Guerrero wrote:
“The policies and objectives of the Political Reform Act are not analogous to the Copyright Act in the context of attorney’s fee awards.”
She elaborated:
“Although the Court of Appeal correctly recognized the difficulty in generalizing about the relative resources available to plaintiffs and defendants in Political Reform Act litigation…, we do not believe this is a reason to reject the approach outlined in Christiansburg. Even if some plaintiffs may have sufficient resources to pursue their claims, that fact does not undermine our conclusion that the statutory scheme here, which depends on an individual acting as a private attorney general to enforce a law for a public benefit, is more like the antidiscrimination laws at issue in Christiansburg…than the copyright scheme at issue in Fogerty.”
Guerrero continued:
“Indeed, a rule subjecting unsuccessful plaintiffs to substantial financial risk in Political Reform Act cases, where the plaintiff often will have suffered no particularized harm, would discourage all but a few from seeking to enforce laws vital to ensuring transparency in the political process. We therefore cannot say that the factors justifying the Christiansburg rule are ‘absent’ here.”
She noted that Mackey also awarded fees under Code of Civil Procedure §1021.5, a private attorney general statute, which Wiley did not discuss.
“Whether defendants have demonstrated that plaintiffs’ lawsuit was objectively groundless—or whether the fee award could instead be upheld under Code of Civil Procedure section 1021.5—is a matter for the Court of Appeal to determine in the first instance,” she said. “We express no view on the merits of awarding attorney’s fees under either statute.”
The case is Travis v. Brand, 2023 S.O.S. 408.
Copyright 2023, Metropolitan News Company