Enemies of the people
Suppose the time came to pay for a restaurant meal and you asked a waiter the amount of your bill. How would you react if the waiter pointed to you, the best dressed member of your party, and said $313, then switched focus to your associate dressed in jeans and a tee shirt and said it was only $70 if she paid? How could the same meal cost almost five times as much for you just because you appear to have more money?
Something similar happens with medical professionals who have “negotiated rates” with insurance companies, which are sometimes less than the rates they charge cash paying patients. In that example however, the customer with the expensive suit, the insurance company, is actually paying less.
I’ve seen people on an airline flight go ballistic after finding out the person in the seat next to them paid $50 less for the same trip. Americans have an inherent belief the cost of goods and services should be the same for everyone regardless of things like race, religion, social status and, yes, the ability to pay more. A battle over similar issues was just fought in congress. The side that said the rich should pay more because they have more money lost that battle.
So why was it okay for Angel Law, the law firm that represented Building a Better Redondo (BBR) in its lawsuit against the city of Redondo Beach, to fix the price of services to BBR at $70,000 but charge the city $313,000 for the same services? Because a judge said it was OK.
There’s nothing unusual about the prevailing party in a lawsuit suing for and receiving attorney’s fees and court costs. If the city had won that lawsuit, there’s a strong possibility it could have recovered its legal expenses by citing Code of Civil Procedure section 1038, which allows public entities to recover costs for “unmeritorious and frivolous litigation.” But the city lost the lawsuit and with that defeat any claim for frivolous litigation.
As is often the case with lawyers, courts, judges and the murky world they work diligently to present as incomprehensible to non-lawyers, victory and defeat has little or nothing to do with right and wrong. BBR representatives have stated they had a fee cap of $70,000 of which they paid $30,000.
Most likely, if BBR’s $40,000 balance had come due or if the city had prevailed and won a suit for attorney’s fees, BBR would have negotiated with Angel Law or the city to reduce or eliminate that debt. Future contributors would have paid any remaining balance.
If that failed, the officers could simply file for bankruptcy, a common, legal remedy for corporations whose liabilities exceed assets. Angel Law or the city could have attempted to pierce the corporate shield and hold directors and officers personally liable. As a practical matter, it’s extremely unlikely the law firm or the city would have followed that course.
The city was almost guaranteed to lose money regardless of the outcome of the lawsuit. At the moment it’s on the hook for its own legal costs plus the $313,000. If the court decision had gone the other way and Redondo Beach had won the suit and been awarded attorney’s fees, it probably would have gotten little or no payment from BBR due to negotiation, bankruptcy or BBR simply folding up its tent and going away.
There’s certainly a lot of blame to go around. Blame the city council for trying to avoid putting the land use issues to a vote in the first place. Blame BBR for filing the lawsuit that got Measure G on the ballot and subsequently approved by voters. It’s hard to find any clear right or wrong that isn’t heavily influenced by opinion and emotion.
If the $313,000 judgment against Redondo Beach withstands an appeal, every man, woman and child in the city will have paid Angel Law almost $5. If the people of Redondo Beach got the same rate for the same legal services that Building A Better Redondo was going to get, that figure would be less than $1.
I’d guess most Redondoans are like me, they don’t feel they got much for their $5. I’d also speculate that like me, if they had to pay $5 instead of $1 they didn’t want to pay in the first place, the issue of attorney’s fees might be the easiest part of the whole argument in which to see a distinct and clear right and wrong. ER