Henriquez v. Henriquez
Decision Date | 08 May 2009 |
Docket Number | No. 1774, September Term, 2007.,1774, September Term, 2007. |
Citation | 971 A.2d 345,185 Md. App. 465 |
Parties | Jose HENRIQUEZ v. Ana S. HENRIQUEZ. |
Court | Court of Special Appeals of Maryland |
Luiz R.S. Simmons (Auerback & Simmons on the brief), Silver Spring, for appellant.
Deena Hausner and Ashley R. Sikora of Baltimore, for appellee.
Panel: HOLLANDER, WOODWARD, GRAEFF, JJ.
This appeal arises from an award of attorney's fees granted in the custody phase of a divorce and custody case between Jose Henriquez, appellant, and Ana S. Henriquez, appellee. Following a two-day hearing on the issues of custody, visitation, and child support, the Circuit Court for Montgomery County ordered, among other things, that Mr. Henriquez pay $5,000 in attorney's fees to the House of Ruth Domestic Violence Legal Clinic (the "House of Ruth"), a non-profit organization that provided Ms. Henriquez with free legal representation at trial. On appeal, Mr. Henriquez presents several issues for our review, which we have consolidated and reworded as follows:
1. Is a court authorized to award attorney's fees in a case where a party is represented by a non-profit legal services organization that does not charge the litigant a fee for its representation?
2. Did the circuit court properly exercise its discretion in awarding attorney's fees to the House of Ruth when the bill for attorney's fees was not provided in discovery prior to the custody proceeding?1
For the reasons set forth below, we shall affirm the judgment of the circuit court.
The parties were married in El Salvador on April 18, 1998, and they had two children during the marriage: Ana, born in 1998; and Jessica, born in 2000. Ms. Henriquez had one child prior to the marriage: Gloria, born in 1994. On December 27, 2005, Ms. Henriquez filed in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County a Complaint for Absolute Divorce, which included a request for the legal and physical custody of the children and "reasonable counsel fees and costs" of the proceedings. The circuit court bifurcated the trial to consider the issues of custody, visitation, and child support separate and apart from the grounds for divorce and property disposition issues.
On January 8 and 9, 2007, the court held proceedings on the custody and child support portion of the trial. At the conclusion of the first day of trial, Ms. Henriquez's attorney introduced into evidence an itemized bill for "Attorney's Fees for Custody, Visitation and Support Issues Only." The bill documented counsel's work on the case for 58.34 hours, at $200 per hour, for a total of $11,668. The bill covered the time period from May 19, 2006, to January 7, 2007.2
Mr. Henriquez objected to the introduction of the bill for attorney's fees. He argued as follows:
The objection is twofold so it's clear. Not only do we object to the introduction of the itemization, we object, Mr. Herrera [sic] objects to the request for counsel fees based upon the following history.
In this case, Your Honor, interrogatories, a request for production of documents, and a deposition was [sic] taken. Interrogatory No. 27, which I've made a copy of which I won't bother the Court now, but I'd like to mark and make it part of the record says, if you intend to produce or use any oral or written statements, photographs, video or sound recordings, and/or written documents in any trial or hearing of the case, please provide the following information. And then it goes on to ask for the information. In this particular case, the answer which I'll, [sic] provides no evidence or indication that there will be a statement of counsel fees. And again, the word is written documents. It's just not responsive, in fact, there's no response of course. And then there is the question of the request for production of documents, Request No. 40, a copy of which I have says, any and all documentary evidence which you or anyone on your behalf intends to introduce at the hearing of the matter. And the response is a copy of the photograph and marriage certificate produced. Again, I asked for documentary evidence.
Now we have asked for written documents and we have asked for documentary evidence and neither the exhibit which was marked is that or it's incorporeal evidence which we don't believe really exists. So we think that it should have been submitted.
Counsel for Mr. Henriquez then read excerpts from Ms. Henriquez's deposition, where counsel asked Ms. Henriquez whether she: 1) had "written any checks or paid any money to your lawyers for their legal services to you"; or 2) had "paid them any money to reimburse them from [sic] any costs that they have incurred in representing you in this case." Ms. Henriquez answered these questions in the negative.
Counsel for Mr. Henriquez further read to the court excerpts from the deposition where Ms. Henriquez's counsel responded to his questions regarding whether there was a fee agreement. Ms. Henriquez's counsel stated: "We don't charge money for our hourly legal services." She explained that, at the end of the case, Ms. Henriquez would not owe the House of Ruth any money, with the possible exception of reimbursement for expenses.3
Based on these discovery responses, Mr. Henriquez argued that
The court asked counsel for Ms. Henriquez if she wished to respond, and the following occurred:
Mr. Henriquez testified that he paid his attorney a $5,000 fee to represent him at trial. In closing argument, both attorneys discussed the issue of an award of attorney's fees. Ms. Henriquez argued as follows:
Finally and just briefly, we have submitted a bill for attorneys' fees and would ask the Court to order the payment of fees by Mr. Henriquez. And the case of Blum v. Stenson, which is a United States Supreme Court case, 465 U.S. 886, 104 S.Ct. 1541, 79 L.Ed.2d 891, permits the ordering of attorneys' fees even when a party is represented by a non-profit public interest law firm. Thank you.
Mr. Henriquez responded as follows:
I would say that I think there is something fundamentally wrong when you get no answers to the discovery on a particular issue and then, as I read to the Court, you explicitly ask it over and over again and you get the response "We don't charge." It wasn't we don't charge for this, but we charge, [sic] "We don't charge." We believe that they ought to be estopped from asking for counsel fees in view of what their representation was and that's a matter of record. Thank you very much.
After hearing argument from both parties, the court awarded attorney's fees to Ms. Henriquez. The court explained its decision as follows:
The Court also believes that there should be some award of fees for representation given that essentially Mrs. Henriquez is wholly dependent and went to a community services organization for her representation. She's virtually penniless as far as I can tell. Mr. Henriquez makes what he makes.[4] Any payment to counsel obviously goes out of the...
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...and child support proceedings because of the prospect that counsel might recover fees from another party, see Henriquez v. Henriquez , 185 Md. App. 465, 484, 971 A.2d 345 (2009) (acknowledging the "important policy considerations" promoted by allowing an award of attorney's fees to an entit......
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Henriquez v. Henriquez
...on a pro bono basis. The Court of Special Appeals affirmed the award of attorneys' fees in a reported opinion, Henriquez v. Henriquez, 185 Md. App. 465, 971 A.2d 345 (2009), and we granted certiorari, Henriquez v. Henriquez, 410 Md. 165, 978 A.2d 245 (2009), to address the following questio......
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Worsham v. Greenfield
...organization that provides the party with free legal representation.” Id. at 302, 992 A.2d at 456 (quoting Henriquez, 185 Md.App. 465, 478, 971 A.2d 345, 353 (2009)). As we have seen, ambiguity requires that there be two or more possible alternative interpretations of the language in questi......
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Thompson v. Corry
...similarly awarded attorney's fees to parties represented by pro bono counsel in domestic relations cases. See Henriquez v. Henriquez, 185 Md.App. 465, 971 A.2d 345, 357–58 (2009), aff'd,413 Md. 287, 992 A.2d 446 (2010) (awarding fees under statute similar to A.R.S. § 25–324 and collecting c......