Los Angeles Police Protective League v. City of Los Angeles

• Citation: 188 Cal.App.3d 1,232 Cal.Rptr. 697
• Court: California Court of Appeals
• Decision Date: 19 December 1986
• Parties: LOS ANGELES POLICE PROTECTIVE LEAGUE, Petitioner and Appellant, v. CITY OF LOS ANGELES, et al., Respondents and Appellees. B017862.

Page 697

232 Cal.Rptr. 697

188 Cal.App.3d 1

LOS ANGELES POLICE PROTECTIVE LEAGUE, Petitioner and Appellant, v. CITY OF LOS ANGELES, et al., Respondents and Appellees.

B017862.

Court of Appeal, Second District, Division 7, California.

Dec. 19, 1986.

As Modified on Denial of Rehearing Jan. 16, 1987.

Review Denied March 11, 1987.

Loew & Marr and Robert J. Loew, Cecil W. Marr and Diane Marchant, Los Angeles, for petitioner and appellant

James K. Hahn, City Atty., Frederick N. Merkin, Sr. Asst. City Atty. and Molly Roff-Sheridan, Deputy City Atty.

JOHNSON, Associate Justice.

In this case we issued a published opinion and remanded for the trial court to consider whether attorney fees should be awarded to the prevailing party under the "private attorney general" statute (Code Civ.Proc., § 1021.5). The trial court denied

the request for fees and the prevailing party in the earlier appellate proceeding appeals that denial. We conclude an appellate court owes only limited deference to a trial court determination on this issue when the successful legal action resulted in a published appellate opinion and, in any event, find this trial court had "no reasonable basis" for denying a fee award to the prevailing party for its efforts in the appellate court and thus abused its discretion. Consequently, we reverse that portion of the judgment which denies attorney fees to appellant for its work on the first appeal.

FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS BELOW

This is the second time this case has been before our court. In 1985 we reversed the trial court for denying the appellant Los Angeles Police Protective League (League) a writ of mandate against the City of Los Angeles (City). (Los Angeles Police Protective League v. City of Los Angeles (1985) 166 Cal.App.3d 55, 212 Cal.Rptr. 251.) The underlying case arose when the Los Angeles City Council proposed a new $5 a month parking charge on city employees in a city-leased parking lot. They did this without complying with the "meet and confer" provisions of the Meyers-Millias-Brown Act (Govt. Code § 3500, et seq.). Some of the affected employees were members of the League which filed an "unfair employee relations practice charge" with the City Employee Relations Board (ERB). The ERB agreed with the League and ordered the City to cease and desist from charging the fee, to make whole the employees who had been paying the fee, and to meet and confer with the League before reimposing the fee.

Instead of complying with the ERB order the city council elected to continue imposing the parking fee and refused to "meet and confer" with the League and other employee groups. The League sought a writ of mandate to compel compliance with the ERB order and also sought an attorney fee award. The trial court denied the writ. As a consequence, it failed to reach the attorney fee issue.

On appeal the City took the position it need not comply with orders of the ERB and other City boards and commissions and furthermore that it could not seek a writ to challenge a decision of its own board because the City and its boards are all part of a single entity. We reversed denial of the writ of mandate. We held the City had no power to refuse to obey the ERB order. If it disagreed with the order the City's only recourse was to challenge the ERB order through a section 1094.5 mandate proceeding. Since it had failed to do so the order was binding.

Because the trial court had not reached the attorney fee issue we remanded the case to that court to determine whether the League was entitled to its attorney fees for the trial and appeal of its writ of mandate petition. On July 30, 1985, the League moved for proceedings on remand including a request for attorney fees--$28,120.50--for the cost of the first trial and appeal of the petition. The League offered to waive the attorney fees required to litigate the attorney fee issue if extensive briefing and discovery were not necessary. (However, since it has been forced to expend considerable sums on the instant appeal this waiver offer is no longer in effect.) On September 4, 1985, the court denied the motion for an attorney fee award, ruling the League's legal action, although successful, had not produced a "substantial benefit" nor "vindicated an important public right" as required by section 1021.5.

DISCUSSION

Section 1021.5 of the Code of Civil Procedure authorizes a court to compel the losing party to pay attorney fees to a prevailing party when all four of the following criteria are met. First, it must be an "action which has resulted in the enforcement of an important right affecting the public interest...." Secondly, "a significant benefit, whether pecuniary or non-pecuniary," must have "been conferred on the general public or a large class of persons,...." Thirdly, "the necessity and financial burden of private enforcement" must be "such as to make the award appropriate,...." and fourthly, "such fees should not in the interest of justice be paid out of the recovery, if any." (Code Civ.Proc., § 1021.5.)

The City argues the appellate court should defer completely to the trial court resolution of all four of these elements of the section 1021.5 test. It quotes Supreme Court language in Serrano v. Priest (1977) 20 Cal.3d 25, 49, 141 Cal.Rptr. 315, 569 P.2d 1303: " '[T]he experienced trial judge is the best judge of the value of professional services rendered in his court, ... [and] will not be disturbed unless the appellate court is convinced that it is clearly wrong.' " (Italics added.) However, when deciding whether or not some attorney fee award is appropriate in the instant case the trial court was not appraising the "value of professional services" but whether any award is warranted at all. Moreover, for the most part the trial court was looking at the legal services rendered in this court, that is the appellate court, not "his court."

We first consider what is the proper scope of review of a trial court determination on the attorney fee question where the legal work produced a published appellate court opinion and then examine whether the trial court's denial of attorney fees in this case should be reversed in whole or in part.

I. PROPER SCOPE OF REVIEW WHERE LEGAL ACTION RESULTED IN APPELLATE DECISION

In this case, we remanded to the trial court for the purpose of considering, in the first instance, the request for an attorney fee award under Code of Civil Procedure 1021.5. This was necessary because at least some of the criteria outlined in section 1021.5 entail factual determinations an appellate court is in no position to undertake. However, this does not mean we are bound by the trial court's decision about the appropriateness of an attorney fee award nor its findings of fact. The California Supreme Court's most complete statement on the degree of deference the appellate court owes to the trial court's decision and findings is found in Baggett v. Gates (1982) 32 Cal.3d 128, 142-143, 185 Cal.Rptr. 232, 649 P.2d 874.

Where, as here, a trial court has discretionary power to decide an issue, its decision will be reversed only if there has been a prejudicial abuse of discretion. ' "To be entitled to relief on appeal ... it must clearly appear that the injury resulting from such a wrong is sufficiently grave to amount to a manifest miscarriage of justice....' " (6 Witkin, Cal. Procedure (2d ed. 1971) Appeal, § 242, p. 4234, citations omitted.) However, 'discretion may not be exercised whimsically and, accordingly, reversal is appropriate "where no reasonable basis for the action is shown." ' [Citation.]' (Marini v. Municipal Court (1979) 99 Cal.App.3d 829, 835-837 ; .... [p ] Analysis of plaintiffs' action leads to the conclusion that there was no reasonable basis for the trial court's denial of their motion for attorney fees. (Italics added.)

What the California Supreme Court actually did in Baggett may be even more instructive than the verbal test it set out. It overturned the trial court's denial of an attorney fee award after independently making its own findings as to each of the section 1021.5 criteria and then concluding there was "no reasonable basis" for the trial court's denial of an award.

We regard it crucial to distinguish between two situations--when the trial court is considering a court awarded fee where the litigation began and ended at the trial level as contrasted with one which resulted in an appellate decision. In the former situation, the trial court may well be in a better position than the appellate court to assess whether what happened in that court enforced an "important right affecting the public interest" and "conferred a significant benefit on the general public or a large class of persons." Accordingly, the appellate court owes the trial court a full measure of deference in deciding whether the trial court abused its discretion. But the second situation is something quite different. An appellate court is in at least as good a position as the trial court to judge whether the legal right enforced through its own opinion is "important" and "protects the public interest" and whether the existence of that opinion confers a "significant benefit on the general public or a large class of persons."

Although we reach the same conclusion under the "abuse of discretion" standard, this case highlights why the appellate court indeed appears to be in a better position to determine whether its opinion vindicated an "important right" which "affects the public interest" and yielded a "significant benefit." We have only the highest regard for the particular trial judge who examined these questions in the court below. The fact a jurist of this caliber can err suggests these particular questions are often best decided initially in the appellate court when it is the appellate court which has rendered the decision which vindicates the right and confers the benefits. (As is explored later, this court decided these two questions itself in ...