Mehrabian v. Meruelo Maddox Properties




Filed 5/19/11 Mehrabian v. Meruelo Maddox Properties CA2/1
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS


California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

SECOND APPELLATE DISTRICT

DIVISION ONE

ONNIK MEHRABIAN, as Trustee, etc., Plaintiff and Appellant, v. MERUELO MADDUX PROPERTIES-PONTE VISTA, LLC, Defendant and Respondent.

B219623 (Los Angeles County Super. Ct. No. BC387809)

APPEAL from an order of the Los Angeles Superior Court. Richard L. Fruin, Judge. Affirmed.
Law Office of Michael R. Sohigian and Michael R. Sohigian for Plantiff and Appellant.
Neufeld, Marks, Gralnek & Maker, Timothy L. Neufeld and Alison E. Maker for Defendant and Respondent.


_________________________________


Appeal by plaintiff and cross-defendant Onnik Mehrabian, Trustee of the Mehrabian Family Trust dated November 8, 1993 (“Mehrabian”, from a post-judgment award of attorney fees of $175,361.02 to the prevailing defendant on the complaint, Meruelo Maddux Properties–Ponte Vista, LLC (“Meruelo Maddux”. Because Mehrabian fails to demonstrate that the challenged award abused the trial court’s discretion, we affirm.

Background Facts[1]

Meruelo Maddux had purchased a 23-acre parcel on San Fernando Road, for $30 million, that it intended to develop into a mixed-use residential project. To acquire better access for future development of the property, Meruelo Maddux entered into an agreement and addendum with the Mehrabian Family Trust to purchase an adjoining parcel on which the trust operated an automobile dealership, with $1 million down and $8 million to be paid in installments. Mehrabian then leased the dealership parcel back from Meruelo Maddux, along with a few acres of Meruelo Maddux’s parcel, to afford the parties the time they needed to obtain the necessary development permits and to relocate the dealership. In a separate agreement, Meruelo Maddux agreed to acquire for Mehrabian a specified nearby parcel to which Mehrabian would relocate its dealership, or to pay Meharabian $4 million for relocation. The purchase and lease agreements each provided for attorney fees to be recovered by the prevailing party in the event of disputes.
The entire development plan was scuttled, however, when the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) obtained Meruelo Maddux’s parcel by eminent domain. Because Mehrabian had by then dumped contaminated dirt on the parcel, LAUSD was able to pay substantially less than what Meruelo Maddux contended was the parcel’s value. And meanwhile, because Meruelo Maddux no longer needed the auto-dealership parcel it was buying from Mehrabian, it stopped paying the installments due under its purchase agreement.
Mehrabian obtained a non-judicial foreclosure on the $8 million note, reacquired the dealership parcel, and sued Meruelo Maddux for $4 million damages for failing to provide the promised relocation parcel. Meruelo Maddux cross-complained for indemnity for $55,000 damages Mehrabian had caused to a neighboring parcel’s water supply pipes, and for $7.5 million for its loss due to Mehrabian’s environmental contamination of its parcel.
Meruelo Maddux obtained summary judgment on Mehrabian’s complaint, and after a five-day jury trial, it obtained a $55,000 verdict on its cross-complaint against Mehrabian. Judgment was entered on the complaint on May 5, 2009, and on the cross-complaint on June 3, 2009. No appeals were taken from these judgments.
Following entry of judgment, Meruelo Maddux sought attorney fees of $222,943.92 and costs of $9,722.47 as prevailing party on the complaint, and attorney fees of $169,064.08 and costs of $6,317.85 as prevailing cross-complainant. Its fee motion was supported by the declaration of its lead attorney and 67 pages of timesheets reflecting the services of attorneys in his firm over a 13-month period. Mehrabian opposed the fee request, arguing (1) because it included fees for work related to the foreclosure, a separate action, Meruelo Maddux’s unclean hands should preclude its recovery of any fees at all; (2) the billing rates applied to less-experienced lawyers are unreasonable; (3) fees are claimed for overlapping services; (4) some supporting time entries are erroneous or duplicative; and (5) the requested fees are not appropriately allocated between work to defeat Mehrabian’s complaint, and the cross-complaint on which Meruelo Maddux achieved only a pyrrhic victory.
After reviewing the parties’ written submissions and hearing extensive argument over a period of days, the trial court ruled on the fee motion on August 10, 2009. On the complaint it awarded Meruelo Maddux costs of $9,722.47 and attorney fees of $175,361.03, rather than the $222,943.02 Meruelo Maddox had requested. On the cross-complaint, it awarded Meruelo Maddux’s costs of $1,517.40 (rather than the 6,317.85 requested), and attorney fees of $42,266.02, just one quarter of Meruelo Maddox’s $169,064.08 request. On October 9, 2009 Mehrabian filed its timely appeal from the fee and cost order. (Code Civ. Proc., § 904.1, subd. (a)(2).)
According to the parties, the fees and costs awarded on the cross-complaint have been paid and are not at issue in this appeal. Mehrabian’s appeal challenges only the $175,361.03 award of attorney fees to Meruelo Maddux as prevailing defendant on the complaint.

Discussion

Mehrabian does not contest Meruelo Maddux’s right to recover fees and costs as the prevailing party. It challenges only the amount of the attorney fee award on the complaint, contending that the trial court abused its discretion. Because the ground underlying the trial court’s discretion with respect to fee awards has been so thoroughly and authoritatively plowed by past decisions, we have no occasion to search for new ways to express the settled law: “Civil Code section 1717 (§ 1717) provides that reasonable attorney fees authorized by contract shall be awarded to the prevailing party as ‘fixed by the court.’ The trial court has broad discretion to determine the amount of a reasonable fee, and the award of such fees is governed by equitable principles. [Citation.] The first step involves the lodestar figure—a calculation based on the number of hours reasonably expended multiplied by the lawyer’s hourly rate. ‘The lodestar figure may then be adjusted, based on consideration of factors specific to the case, in order to fix the fee at the fair market value for the legal services provided.’ [Citation.] In short, after determining the lodestar amount, the court shall then ‘“consider whether the total award so calculated under all of the circumstances of the case is more than a reasonable amount and, if so, shall reduce the section 1717 award so that it is a reasonable figure.”’ [Citation.]” (EnPalm, LLC v. Teitler Family Trust (2008) 162 Cal.App.4th 770, 774; PLCM Group, Inc. v. Drexler (2000) 22 Cal.4th 1084, 1095-1096.)
The standard governing our review is equally settled: We will reverse a fee award only if the record shows a manifest abuse of the trial court’s discretion. (PLCM Group, Inc. v. Drexler, supra, 22 Cal.4th at p. 1095.)
Mehrabian argues that in fixing the amount to award for attorney fees for defending against the complaint, the trial court abused its discretion in two respects: First, Meruelo Maddux’s request for fees, including those incurred in its attempt to block Mehrabian’s non-judicial foreclosure on the dealership parcel, constituted an “attempt to mislead the Court into awarding additional fees”; by failing to further reduce or eliminate the fee award due to Meruelo Maddux’s unclean hands, the court abused its discretion. Second, the trial court also abused its discretion by crediting Meruelo Maddux’s less-experienced attorneys with hourly billing rates that were too high. Neither of these contentions has support in the record, and neither has merit. No abuse of discretion is shown.
1. The Trial Court Did Not Abuse Its Discretion By Declining To Further Reduce The Fees Awarded To Meruelo Maddux.
In the trial court Mehrabian argued that the $222,943.92 requested by Meruelo Maddux as attorney fees for its defense against the complaint should be reduced by the fees attributable to Meruelo Maddux’s attempt to block the foreclosure and trustee sale of the dealership parcel, for which no fees should be awarded. When pressed for an amount, Mehrabian told the court that $25,276.50 of the $222,943.92 request should be attributed to the foreclosure defense. The trial court then reduced Meruelo Maddux’s requested fees by $25,288.50 attributable to the foreclosure defense—slightly more than Mehrabian requested—as it unquestionably had discretion to do.
Mehrabian argues on appeal that merely denying that portion of the fee request was not enough. Its argument on this point boils down to a single sentence in its brief, asserting that the trial court abused its discretion by failing to further reduce Meruelo Maddux’s fees due to unclean hands. It asserts that because Meruelo Maddux’s inclusion of that $25,000 in the fee request constituted an “attempt to mislead the Court into awarding additional fees,” the request “justifies applying the doctrine” of unclean hands and the court abused its discretion by failing to further reduce the award to deny any fee recovery at all.[2] It asks this court either to order such a reduction or to remand the matter with directions to the trial court to determine an appropriate further reduction.
But the trial court already did determine an appropriate amount to reduce Meruelo Maddux’s request, and Mehrabian has not suggested any way in which its determination is unjustified or insufficient to eliminate any undeserved fees. Moreover, the trial court did not find that Meruelo Maddox’s fee request exhibited unclean hands, nor do we. Seeing nothing in the record to support Mehrabian’s argument (even if unclean hands had been established, though it was not), we decline to be drawn into a discourse about theoretical circumstances for the application of the doctrine of unclean hands to an attorney fee request.
2. The Trial Court Did Not Abuse Its Discretion By Declining To Further Reduce The Fees For Less-Senior Attorneys.
Mehrabian argues that because some lawyers who participated in Meruelo Maddux’s defense against the complaint had less than five years’ experience when the action was filed, their work should have been credited at an hourly rate of no more than $200.[3] And it argues that the trial court’s “catch-all” reduction of the already-discounted fees by an additional 10 percent was an arbitrary abuse of the trial court’s discretion, for the court should instead have calculated an appropriate reduction of the award “due to the excessive rates of inexperienced lawyers.” Had the court heeded these points, Mehrabian contends, the fee award would have been just $95,000 rather than $217,627.04. These contentions, too, are unsupported and without merit.
The trial court’s 10 percent discount was not “due to the excessive rates of inexperienced lawyers,” for the court found no such thing. It explained that “I don’t depend entirely upon the attorney hourly rate. . . . I do consider the quality of the lawyering, whether I agree with what they’re arguing for or not.” Indeed, the court was careful to clarify that it did not find any overbilling, but attributed its 10 percent reduction to the inevitable—and appropriate—inefficiencies that occur when attorneys work together on a case.[4]
Mehrabian offers a few conclusory sentences about what it believes the evidence does and does not show about appropriate fee rates for various numbers of years of experience; but it provides not a single citation to evidence in the record reflecting the prevailing reasonable hourly rates in the community for similar work, or showing that the rates sought by the fee motion (much less those on which the trial court based its award) are excessive. (See Margolin v. Regional Planning Com. (1982) 134 Cal.App.3d 999, 1004 [prevailing rate for lawyer’s time is fundamental to determination of appropriate attorney fees].) Moreover, the record does in fact contain evidence that squarely supports the trial court’s determination that the rates selected by the trial court “are within [the] standard market rates . . . .” And it shows that the trial court expressly “used [his] own judgment,” based on his years of experience as a trial lawyer and judge, in the evaluation of the fee request.
Thus even if we were to assume that all of the conclusions stated in Mehrabian’s brief are supported by evidence (an assumption we cannot make), still they would show no abuse of the trial court’s discretion. The law is clear: “The ‘experienced trial judge is the best judge of the value of professional services rendered in his court . . . .’” (PLCM Group, Inc. v. Drexler, supra, 22 Cal.4th at p. 1096; Serrano v. Priest (1977) 20 Cal.3d 25, 49.) “The trial court may make its own determination of the value of the services contrary to, or without the necessity for, expert testimony. [Citations.]” (PLCM Group, Inc. v. Drexler, supra, 22 Cal.4th at p. 1096.) In doing so, the court considers a number of factors, “including the nature of the litigation, its difficulty, the amount involved, the skill required in its handling, the skill employed, the attention given, the success or failure, and other circumstances in the case.” (Ibid.; Melnyk v. Robledo (1976) 64 Cal.App.3d 618, 623-624.)
The record shows that the trial court thoroughly reviewed the parties’ presentations and arguments with respect to the appropriate amount of attorney fees; that it substantially reduced the fees requested by Meruelo Maddux, and articulated well-reasoned justifications for doing so; and that it arrived at an award that apparently is challenged only because it is higher than Mehrabian would like, though it is far lower than the fees requested. Because nothing at all suggests that the trial court failed to adhere to the law’s requirements when it determined the appropriate weight to be afforded the work of each of the attorneys, no abuse of its discretion is manifest. (See Fed-Mart Corp. v. Pell Enterprises, Inc. (1980) 111 Cal.App.3d 215, 228 [appellate court will interfere with a determination of reasonable attorney fees “only where there has been a manifest abuse of discretion”].)
The challenged order is affirmed. Meruelo Maddux to recover its costs and reasonable attorney fees on appeal.
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED.


CHANEY, J.
We concur:



MALLANO, P. J. JOHNSON, J.

---