Filed 12/15/23 Kaur v. Pabla CA5

NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS

California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for 

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or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

FIFTH APPELLATE DISTRICT

JASWINDER KAUR et al.,

Plaintiffs and Appellants,

v.

GURJIT PABLA et al.,

Defendants and Respondents.

F085505

(Super. Ct. No. 20CV-03476)

OPINION

THE COURT*

APPEAL from an order of the Superior Court of Merced County. Brian L. 

McCabe, Judge.

HBG Law and Harry B. Gill for Plaintiffs and Appellants Jaswinder Kaur and 

Parkash Pabla.

Law Office of Sandra Kuhn McCormack and Sandra Kuhn McCormack for 

Defendant and Respondent ECP, LP.

-ooOoo-

* Before Franson, Acting P. J., Smith, J. and Snauffer, J.
2

This appeal follows the dismissal of a cross-complaint and the award of attorney’s 

fees. Appellants Jaswinder Kaur and Parkash Pabla, who were the successful parties, 

now challenge the amount of fees awarded by the trial court. We affirm the court’s 

award of attorney’s fees. 

BACKGROUND

A cross-complaint was filed on March 15, 2022, by respondent ECP, LP (ECP), 

alleging Kaur and Pabla committed a slander on title, and intentionally interfered with 

business relationships. The cross-complaint was filed in an action brought by Kaur and 

Pabla against ECP to set aside a trustee’s sale of property allegedly based on the use of a 

forged promissory note and deed of trust, which included a lis pendens. ECP was the 

purchaser of the subject property at the trustee’s sale. 

On April 8, 2022, Kaur and Pabla filed a notice of their special motion to strike the 

cross-complaint (anti-SLAPP), without leave to amend, pursuant to Code of Civil 

Procedure section 425.16.1 On May 20, 2022, the trial court granted Kaur and Pabla’s 

motion to strike and dismissed the cross-complaint. 

Thereafter, on July 19, 2022, Kaur and Pabla filed a motion to recover reasonable 

attorney’s fees and costs as the prevailing parties on the special motion to strike. The 

motion was supported by a memorandum of points and authorities, a declaration from 

Harry B. Gill, Kaur and Pabla’s attorney, and a “[c]ompendium of [e]xhibits.” The 

exhibits included a copy of the cross-complaint and Gill’s “Curriculum Vitae.” In his 

declaration, Gill noted his hourly rate for the representation he provided in this case was 

$650. Gill then detailed over nine pages how he spent his time researching and preparing 

1 All further statutory citations are to the Code of Civil Procedure.
3

the special motion to strike, resulting in a request on behalf of Kaur and Pabla of 

$62,367.502for attorney’s fees, and $60 for costs. 

An opposition to this motion was submitted by ECP, challenging the 

reasonableness of the amount of fees requested on behalf of Kaur and Pabla. In addition 

to the memorandum of points and authorities, the opposition was supported by a 

declaration from ECP’s attorney, Sandra Kuhn McCormack. In this declaration,

McCormack described her experience practicing in parts of the San Joaquin Valley 

region, and stated her hourly rate was $350. McCormack noted that she billed only 

$3,500 for her opposition to the special motion to strike. McCormack’s declaration also 

contained three separate declarations from attorneys that questioned the depth of 

Mr. Gill’s participation in the case, the reasonableness of his fee request in Merced and 

similar counties, and the average amount of time a special motion to strike should take 

for an experienced attorney to prepare. Attached to one of these declarations were 

examples of other requests for attorney’s fees filed in other actions in Merced County, 

which listed fees at somewhere between $290 and $490, with most in the $300 to 

$350 range. A reply to this opposition was submitted on behalf of Kaur and Pabla on

August 30, 2022, which contained not only legal arguments, but also objections to the 

evidence submitted on behalf of ECP in their opposition to the request for attorney’s fees. 

Following the posting of a tentative ruling, and a request for oral argument, a 

hearing was held on September 7, 2022.3 During the hearing, the trial court initially 

expressed its belief that a reasonable fee would equal $4,000 in Merced County. The 

court also noted that hourly rates did not normally exceed $300 in the county. However, 

2

In his declaration, Gill never provided an overall total for the hours he spent on the 

motion, relying instead on a breakdown of each task. However, after dividing $650 into 

the $62,367.50 total, he appears to have spent somewhere between 95 and 96 hours on 

the special motion to strike. 

3 We have not been provided a copy of the tentative ruling. 
4

at the end of the hearing, the court awarded Kaur and Pabla $6,500 for attorney’s fees 

related to the special motion to strike. A formal order was signed documenting this 

award on December 2, 2023. No award of costs was mentioned in either the hearing or in 

the order, and neither contained any rulings on the evidentiary objections submitted on 

behalf of Kaur and Pabla.

4

 

DISCUSSION

Again, the focus of this appeal is on the amount of attorney’s fees awarded by the 

trial court. “An order granting or denying a special motion to strike shall be appealable 

under [s]ection 904.1.” (§ 425.16, subd. (i).) 

I. The Reasonableness of the Award of Attorney’s Fees

A. The Legal Standard

Under section 425.16, subdivision (b)(1):

“A cause of action against a person arising from any act of that 

person in furtherance of the person’s right of petition or free speech under 

the United States Constitution or the California Constitution in connection 

with a public issue shall be subject to a special motion to strike, unless the 

court determines that the plaintiff has established that there is a probability 

that the plaintiff will prevail on the claim.” 

If the party bringing this motion prevails, that party is entitled to recover the reasonable 

attorney’s fees and costs incurred in pursuing the motion. (§ 425.16, subd. (c).) This 

particular motion to strike is commonly referred to as an anti-SLAPP motion. (Ketchum 

v. Moses (2001) 24 Cal.4th 1122, 1131 (Ketchum).) 

Over many years, our courts have addressed how to calculate what is considered a 

reasonable request for attorney’s fees. In the Ketchum case, the Supreme Court discussed 

the history of how the law on this issue was developed and concluded that the 

“touchstone or lodestar figure [is] based on [a] ‘careful compilation of the time spent and 

4 The failure to obtain a ruling on an objection made in the trial court will result in a 

forfeiture of the argument on appeal. (See People v. Valdez (2012) 55 Cal.4th 82, 122.) 
5

reasonable hourly compensation of each attorney ... involved in the presentation of the 

case.’ ” (Ketchum, supra, 24 Cal.4th at pp. 1131–1132.) Among the factors that will be

considered are “(1) the novelty and difficulty of the questions involved, (2) the skill 

displayed in presenting them, (3) the extent to which the nature of the litigation precluded 

other employment by the attorneys, [and] (4) the contingent nature of the fee award.” 

(Id. at p. 1132.) The goal is to “fix a fee at the fair market value for the particular 

action.” (Ibid.) Case law has held the trial court judge is in the best position to assess 

what is a reasonable fee in the community where the request is made. (Ibid.) 

While a defendant who brings a successful anti-SLAPP motion to strike is entitled 

to attorney’s fees, those fees must be reasonable, not necessarily consisting of the entire 

amount requested by the moving party. (569 East County Boulevard LLC v. Backcountry 

Against the Dump, Inc. (2016) 6 Cal.App.5th 426, 433.) The party making the request 

for fees bears the burden of proving the request is reasonable. (Christian Research 

Institute v. Alnor (2008) 165 Cal.App.4th 1315, 1320.) Once fees and costs are awarded, 

any challenge of that award on appeal is reviewed using an abuse of discretion standard. 

(Premier Medical Management Systems, Inc. v. California Ins. Guarantee Assn. (2008) 

163 Cal.App.4th 550, 556, citing Ketchum, supra, 24 Cal.4th 1122.) An abuse of 

discretion will only be found when “ ‘ “the trial court exceed[s] the bounds of reason” ’

when making its award of attorney fees.” (Premier Medical, at p. 557.) 

B. Application of This Standard to the Award of Fees

Based on the record before this court, we cannot conclude the trial court exceeded 

any bounds of reason when calculating the award of attorney’s fees for Kaur and Pabla. 

When issuing its ruling, the court stated: 

“All right. So the [c]ourt is going to set it at [$]6500, which is in our 

case would be—see, that’s almost 20 hours of work in this kind of—this

county. The [C]entral [V]alley is charging never much more than 
6

300 dollars an hour. So you guys are still getting a bonus. We’ll set it at 

$6500, which is equivalent of 20 hours.” 

The record contains evidence provided on behalf of ECP that an hourly rate of $650 in 

Merced County was not common for the type of motion prepared in this case. 

Specifically, the record shows attorney’s fees in Merced County for similar types of 

motions fall somewhere between $290 and $490 per hour, with most in the $300 to 

$350 per hour range. The record also contains opinion evidence by attorneys in the 

community that the time spent on the motion by Gill was excessive.

5

 In fact, the attorney 

for ECP stated in her declaration that she spent only 10 hours preparing her opposition to 

the special motion to strike. 

We conclude the award of $6,500 was an entirely reasonable award for attorney’s 

fees incurred for the preparation of this motion and did not constitute an abuse of 

discretion. 

DISPOSITION

The order awarding attorney’s fees in this matter is affirmed. Each party shall 

bear their own costs on appeal. 

5 Again, by dividing $650 into the $62,367.50 requested, Gill is representing he 

spent 95 to 96 hours to prepare the anti-SLAPP motion to strike.