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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to likely obtain class certification. Surely the more prudent thing was for counsels to

invest these few hours in ascertaining whether a class was appropriate, rather than

wasting their and the court’s time in aggressively pursuing an unjustified motion.

Unfortunately, the trial court’s hindsight complaint that this case concerned only the

Cromars’ rights after all would mean that, next time, plaintiffs’ counsel should not even

inquire about whether class allegations are justified. As discussed further below, this is

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87780-1-I/18

blatantly deleterious to the enforcement of the RLTA. See Silver v. Rudeen Mgmt. Co.,

Inc., 197 Wn.2d 535, 544, 546-48, 484 P.3d 1251 (2021).

Moreover, the discovery was relevant to the Cromars’ RLTA claim, too. As noted,

discovery yielded the information that, besides the Cromars, TAG Realty illegally stole

tens of thousands of dollars from at least 13 other tenants. Even if the Cromars’ counsel

made the reasonable judgment that 13 was too few potential class members to meet

the numerosity requirement of CR 23, the discovered information nevertheless

evidenced TAG Realty’s “intentional refusal” to give the refund due, and so was directly

relevant to the Cromars’ own claim under RCW 59.18.280(2).

The court’s order also provides no explanation as to what tasks were included in

the compensable 16 hours and what purportedly segregable tasks the remaining 36.9

hours were spent on to justify their exclusion. See Loeffelholz, 119 Wn. App. at 691.

The trial court’s authorizing a residential tenant no more than two day’s worth of

attorney time to contest their landlord’s illegal withholding of a security deposit simply