C.A. Affirms $2.3 Million Fee Award Against AIDS Foundation

Wednesday, June 3, 2026

Page 3

C.A. Affirms $2.3 Million Fee Award Against AIDS Foundation

Opinion Rejects Assertion That Amount Is Unreasonable After Settlement Reached Following Years of Protracted Litigation Over Group’s Management of Skid Row-Area Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles

By a MetNews Staff Writer

Div. Four of this district’s Court of Appeal has affirmed an order awarding a plaintiffs class nearly $2.3 million in attorney fees in a case accusing an AIDS advocacy group of failing to maintain habitable conditions in a Skid Row hotel owned by the foundation for the purported benefit of low-income residents, saying that the judge did not abuse his discretion by saying that he would “go gentle on the lodestar request” in light of certain reductions to the request.

In Monday’s unpublished opinion authored by Santa Cruz Superior Court Judge Syda K. Cogliati, sitting by assignment, the court rejects the advocacy group’s characterization that Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William F. Highberger erred by first making “case-specific” alterations to the fee request and relying upon those adjustments “as a basis to not engage in the required lodestar analysis.” Cogliati wrote:

“Although the court summarized its adjustments prior to stating the lodestar, it calculated the figure as prescribed by multiplying the number of hours it deemed reasonable by the billing rates it deemed reasonable. The court’s statement that it would ‘go gentle on the lodestar request, as such, as a starting point’ does not demonstrate the contrary.”

The parties agreed to settle the case in September 2024—more than four years after a tenant, Tammy Davis, filed a putative class action complaint against the group, AIDS Healthcare Foundation (“AHF”), and two years after the trial court granted class certification as to certain asserted habitability issues such as unsanitary conditions in the common areas of the hotel—for a payment of $575,000 as well as the performance of certain nonmonetary terms.

Settlement Agreement

Under the terms of the settlement agreement, the defendant agreed to “not dispute that Plaintiff’s Counsel have a right to fees and allowable costs” but retained “every argument on why the amount…claimed should be reduced.” After Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William F. Highberger approved the settlement agreement in May 2025, he partially granted the plaintiffs’ request for fees after applying a 40% reduction.

The plaintiffs requested a lodestar of $3,675,730.75, representing 4,734.3 hours completed through the filing of the motion, plus a 2.0 multiplier, and sought an additional $113,550 for 115 hours of work they expected to perform relating to the motion. In total, their motion sought $7,465,011.50 in fees.

Lead attorneys, Los Angeles solo practitioner Annette Harings and Jennifer Kramer of the Koreatown-based Kramer Brown Hui LLP, filed declarations in support of the request, citing hourly rates ranging from $395 to $1,210. AHF opposed the motion, arguing for a 90% reduction in the lodestar figure due to a host of asserted issues, including a “lack of experience, limited success, over-litigating, overbilling, unreasonable hourly rates, and lack of civility.”

Fee Hearing

At the conclusion of the May 2025 hearing on the fee request, Highberger issued a written order, commenting that the “hostility between counsel” was “mutual combat” and noting that, while the plaintiffs “failed to obtain class certification on “many theories of liability,” the “defense counsel have greatly complicated Plaintiff’s tasks by its own strategic and tactical choices.” Saying that “greater reductions…could be justified,” he wrote:

“Since the Court is going to exercise its discretion to (1) deny a requested multiplier…, (2) reduce the award due to incivility by 12% as to…Law Offices of Annette Harings and 6% as to…Kramer Brown Hui LLP…, and (4) reduce the award due to the inefficiency…by 10% as to…Law Offices of Annette Harings and 16% as to…Kramer Brown Hui LLP…, the Court will go gentle on the lodestar request….”

Highberger added:

“Since this case has been pending for five years and Plaintiff’s counsel are waiting for their money, the Court is prepared to accept the billing rates sought to cover the entire period,…simply to use them as a basis for somewhat [sic] crude, but necessary, math exercise. The lodestar for all hours is $3,789,280.75….Applying the 40% reduction determined above, the 60% net award is [approximately] $2,274,000, of this $1,227,960 (54%) to Kramer Brown Hui LLP and $1,046,040 (46%) to Law Offices of Annette Harings.”

Deferential Review

Highlighting the deference due to trial courts relating to fee awards, Cogliati wrote:

“Defendant contends the trial court erred from the outset by failing to ‘make an independent, careful calculation of the lodestar.’…We are not persuaded….Rather than reducing the number of hours included at the lodestar stage, the court went ‘gentle’ there and accounted for inefficiency by applying substantial percentage reductions to the lodestar. It was within its discretion to take that approach, which avoided duplicative reductions.”

She continued:

“We are equally unpersuaded by defendant’s contention that the court abused its discretion by ‘arbitrarily accepting without evaluating the reasonableness of the number of hours…in the lodestar calculation.’ Plaintiffs’ hours were supported by billing records and declarations, to which the court implicitly overruled defendant’s objections. We presume the court considered these documents….The court’s incorporation of those documented hours into the initial lodestar accordingly was not arbitrary.”

Reasonableness of Rates

Saying that the defendant “improperly cit[ed] an unpublished trial court opinion” in asserting that Highberger failed to determine whether the billed rates were reasonable, the jurist remarked:

“[The] plaintiffs submitted multiple declarations attesting to the reasonableness of their rates, and the trial court additionally cited its decades of experience with the local market. It was not an abuse of discretion or demonstration of prejudice for the court to rely on these sources….”

Noting that “the court did not find further reductions were justified, only that they could be justified,” she added:

“Determining the precise percentage by which to reduce or increase an award lies squarely within [judicial] discretion. The court’s consideration and ultimate rejection of further reductions in this case evinces a thoughtful exercise of discretion, not an abuse of it.”

Acting Presiding Justice Audra Mori and Justice Armen Tamzarian joined in the opinion.

The case is Davis v. AIDS Healthcare Foundation, B348322.

Kramer, Sam Brown, and Sam Vega of Kramer Brown Hui LLP as well as Haring represented the plaintiffs on appeal. Acting for the defendant were Andrew F. Kim and Rebecca J. Riley of the Northridge-based Kim Riley Law, in addition to Thomas Myers of the downtown firm Smith & Myers LLP as well as in-house attorney for the foundation Jonathan M. Eisenberg.