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Court of Appeal:
No Attorney Fees for Trouncing City’s Contempt-Order Bid
By a MetNews Staff Writer
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HAVEN CARAVELLI Grass Valley vice mayor |
The Third District Court of Appeal has declared that an award of attorney fees was properly denied a man who defeated a city’s efforts to have him held in contempt of court for violating a workplace violence restraining order by placing two posts on his Facebook page asserting that a municipal official was being accorded favored treatment by local government.
Code of Civil Procedure §527.6(s) does provide that the prevailing party in an action seeking such a restraining order “may be awarded court costs and attorney’s fees, if any,” Justice Elana Duarte acknowledged in Friday’s unpublished opinion, but said that appellant Matthew Ward Coulter’s victory came not under that statute, but pursuant to the law relating to civil contempts.
Superior Court Judge Kelly Babineau of California’s Nevada County did on Jan. 25, 2024, find Coulter, a Gadfly in the City of Grass Valley, to be in contempt. On March 20 of that year, the defendant filed a petition for a writ of prohibition in the Court of Appeal; that court on May 8, 2024 announced its intent to issue a peremptory writ in the first instance; Babineau on May 24 vacated her contempt adjudication and found the defendant to be not guilty.
On Aug. 20, 2024, she denied Coulter’s motion for an award of attorney fees based on a lack of statutory authorization.
The restraining order that had been imposed on Coulter protected all Grass Valley “employees and contractors” without naming them and contained such provisions as barring the restrained party from contacting any of them or entering their places of business. In the petition for a writ of prohibition, Penn Valley attorney Patrick H. Dwyer protested:
“Under the Restraining Order, Petitioner may not do things like go to the fire department to report a fire or request assistance. He may not go to any city office. He may not approach a Grass Valley police officer on the street.’ Frankly…, he is largely prohibited from going to much of downtown Grass Valley.”
The city alleged that Coulter violated the restraining order by posting a photo of a truck owned by a local business that was parked in a crosswalk. That business, which Coulter charged regularly parks its trucks illegally, is owned by a City Council member, Haven Caravelli, and her husband, Matthew Gross.
Caravelli is currently the city’s vice mayor.
Coulter also posted a photo, captured from the city’s website, of El Barrio Mexican Market which, at the time, was owned by Caravelli and Gross. The alleged contemnor questioned the propriety of the city promoting the business interests of one of its officials.
In initially finding that Coulter was in contempt, Babineau, who was appointed to her post on Jan, 31, 2023, determined that the posts were “directed at [Caravelli] and her business” and were designed to “antagonize” the Council member.
Argument on Appeal
Dwyer, in urging the Third District to reverse the order denying attorney fees, argued that the city’s contempt action sprang from an alleged violation of the §527.6 restraining order based on a supposed harassment of Caravelli, so that “there is no question that the substantive law of the case” is to be found in §527.6, and that the contempt statute, Code of Civil Procedure §527.6.5, “merely provided the procedural law.”
The lawyer maintained:
“Under § 527.6(s), the prevailing party on the substantive law is entitled to an award of reasonable attorney’s fees.”
He cited 2009 Court of Appeal decision by the First District’s Div. Four which sets forth:
“[W]e conclude that a prevailing defendant can recover attorney fees in an action for injunctive relief against harassment, even if the action was brought in good faith and is not frivolous, if the trial court decides in its discretion to award such fees.”
Duarte’s Opinion
Duarte wrote:
“[W]hale section 527.6. subdivision (s) provides for attorney fees to ‘[t]he prevailing party in an action brought pursuant to this section,’ the relevant motion here was a motion for contempt, not an application for a temporary restraining order….Accordingly, the attorney fees provision in section 527, subdivision (s) does not apply here.”
The justice also rejected Coulter’s contention that he should be awarded attorney fees under the private attorney general statute, Code of Civil Procedure §1021.5, saying:
“[T]he record demonstrates that the primary effect of Coulter’s successful defense against the contempt motion was to defeat the City’s motion based on the insufficiency of the evidence to support a finding of (the undefined concept of) harassment, not to defend the right to free speech in a way that significantly benefitted a large group of persons.”
The case is City of Grass Valley v. Coulter, C102046.
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