AN APPEAL TO REASON

I can't stress enough the importance of an attorney's credibility. Take a look at Christian Research Institute v. Alnor (Aug. 13, 2008, G039424) ___ Cal.App.4th ___, 2008 WL 3411742, which was decided by the Fourth Appellate District, Division Three in Santa Ana. In that case, the defendant appealed from a post-judgment award of legal fees on an anti-SLAPP motion. He claimed his attorney expended more than 600 hours - 228.7 for the motion and 410 for the appeal - but the trial court reduced the compensable attorney time from over $250,000 to just 71 hours for an award of $21,300.

The reviewing court affirmed the trial court's award, finding the fee request included "noncompensable hours and vague, indecipherable billing statements, destroying the credibility of the submission" and justifying a severe reduction. A successful defendant is entitled to attorney's fees for the motion, and if necessary, an appeal, but not the entire litigation.

The court found much of the work done by five different lawyers was duplicative and unnecessary, and "blockbilling" was used to obscure what work was done. It wrote, "[c]ounsel inflated the fee claim with a multitude of time entries devoted to matters other than the motion to strike, thereby undermining the credibility of counsel's other entries." Ouch! The court concluded, "Counsel's willingness to flout the statutory restriction on the scope of anti-SLAPP fee claims justified the trial court in taking a jaundiced view of the fee request." Further ouch!

The court was critical of the work performed as well. It resolved a significant issue without any aid from defendant, who failed to cite several important cases. (After 600 hours? Oops!) It noted, "An attorney's chief asset in submitting a fee request is his or her credibility, and where vague, blockbilled time entries inflated with noncompensable hours destroy an attorney's credibility with the trial court, we have no power on appeal to restore it."

As though the wound was not already smarting, the court rejected the attorney's argument that the trial court must sift through the "noncompensable, vague, blockbilled attorney time entries and expect particularized, individual deletions as the only consequence." The court felt that the trial court had no duty to do so when the attorney made "no effort to prune the fee request to comply with the law." More pain to come . . . "The trial court could reasonably conclude counsel's disregard for the law undercut the credibility of their fee request and, as officers of the court, warranted a severe reaction."

This case is instructive reading when preparing motions for attorney's fees in any case. Pay attention to providing adequate details of your services, and avoid duplication of efforts when more than one attorney is performing services. But, above all else, protect your credibility with the court.