Source: http://nwlawyer.wsba.org/nwlawyer/october_2014?pg=31&lm=1516237579000
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 01:45:15+00:00

Document:
vehicles. Judge Barnet’s exclusion of that evidence was affirmed. The plaintiff’s bar may take some comfort in the Court of Appeal’s assessment that excluding Tencer’s expert testimony is so routine as to not require great time and effort justifying large fees to do so.
6. See Caryl, “Reconsidering Block Billing Practices,” January 2011, Washington State Bar Ne ws.
7. Even so, Division I in a very recent decision approved a multiplier of 1. 5 in a tort case. Miller v. Kenny, ___ Wn. App. ___, ___ P.3d ___, 2014 WL 1672946 (April 28, 2014). Judge Becker was the author of both Berryman and Kenny. Kenny was a wholly different case from Berryman, with much more at stake in damages. The case was highly litigated (by superb, high-profile lawyers) for a prolonged period of time. The trial court appears to have done an excellent job responding to the kind of defense arguments unsuccessfully advanced and apparently ignored by the trial court in Berryman. Kenny suggests that when the contingency fee risks are adequately documented by the prevailing party, the lodestar fees are clearly reasonable and the trial court squarely addresses the arguments challenging the fee-shifting efforts of the prevailing party, multipliers in Division I are not an endangered species.
8. The court even cited in a footnote examples of what they saw as exemplary findings and conclusions in support of a fee award and multiplier.
9. Where the court was headed became very clear in the next paragraph: “It is true that the court will not overturn a large attorney fee award in civil litigation merely because the amount at stake in the case is small.” Mahler, 135 Wn.2d at 433. This cautionary observation should not, however, become a talisman for justifying an other wise excessive award.
10. See, e.g., Target, Slip Op. at 10–11, where the court discussed Collings v. City First Mortgage Services, LLC, 177 Wn. App. 908, 929, 317 P.3d 1047 (2013); Fiore v. PPG Indus., Inc., 169 Wn. App. 325, 279 P.3d 972 (2012); Taliesen Corp. v. Razore Land Co., 135 Wn. App. 106, 144 P.3d 1185 (2006); Mayer v. City of Seattle, 102 Wn. App. 66, 10 P.3d 408 (2000); Dash Point Vill. Assocs. v. Exxon Corp., 86 Wn. App. 596, 937 P.2d 1148 (1997).
11. The court cited Fetzer for this conclusion, but did not acknowledge that the fees in Fetzer were based on the Long Arm Statute, where the only fees allowable in fee shifting were those fees that represented the enhanced cost of having to defend a case far from home.
12. No Washington state appellate courts have shown any serious inclination to call lawyers to task on the rampant use of block billing submitted to their clients, despite the fact that it is conclusively established that block billing enables lawyers to bill their clients excessively. Hopefully this Berryman opinion will cause more Washington trial and appellate courts to exact consequences for blanket use of block billing by lawyers in the future.
13. Bowers v. Transamerica Title, 100 Wn.2d 581, 597, 675 P.2d 193 (1983); Pham v. Seattle City Light, 159 Wn.2d 527, 541–44, 151 P.3d 976 (2007); Sanders v. State, 169 Wn.2d 827, 869, 240 P.3d 120 (2010).
pliers are not rare at all but relatively common.
15. 177 Wn. App. at 668.
which were modest cases like this Berryman case.
offers, followed by hard-nosed litigation tactics.
legislatively to the MAR statute.
17. 177 Wn. App. at 675.
19. 177 Wn. App. at 658.
21. Mahler v. Szucs, 135 Wn.2d at 436.

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