Wash. Court of Appeals published opinion — 877801 orderandopinion.pdf

Citation: Wash. Court of Appeals published opinion — 877801 orderandopinion.pdf
Jurisdiction: Washington (state)
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Original Source: https://www.courts.wa.gov/opinions/pdf/877801%20orderandopinion.pdf ↗

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The Court finds that the number of hours incurred by Plaintiffs’
counsel were not reasonable. This case was filed as a putative class
action. That threat drastically limited the possibility of reaching a
negotiated resolution. Once the class claims were abandoned, … [TAG
Realty] took little time conceding to entry of judgment. But by then the
plaintiffs had incurred significant fees, again limiting the possibility of
reaching a negotiated resolution. Had the lawsuit instead been brought
simply to recover the plaintiffs’ damages (the “successful result,” …
[Mahler v. Szucs, 135 Wn.2d 398, 434, 957 P.2d 632 (1998)]), a
negotiated resolution may have been reached early, and, if not, the
plaintiffs’ lawyers could have immediately sought summary judgment on
what was a very straightforward claim. Instead, the plaintiffs approached
the case as a class action, including propounding and reviewing discovery
relevant to proving class claims. … That work—prosecuting the matter as
a putative class action—was devoted to “unsuccessful claims, duplicated
or wasted effort, or otherwise unproductive time” and must be excluded.
… [See Chuong Van Pham v. City of Seattle, 159 Wn.2d 527, 538, 151
P.3d 976 (2007)]. Even work devoted to proving the plaintiffs’ individual
claim was “unproductive” in that, had the class claims not been pursued,
the plaintiffs could have reached a resolution (whether negotiated or by
court order) with far fewer hours expended. The Court finds that, at most,
sixteen (16) hours were reasonably expended (including fees on fees) on
prosecution of this matter.

The court concluded that “[g]iven that approximately half of the work was accomplished

by each lawyer,” the lodestar should be computed as the total of eight hours of work by