Source: https://law.justia.com/cases/california/court-of-appeal/3d/78/82.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 15:57:25+00:00

Document:
COUNTY OF INYO, Petitioner, v. CITY OF LOS ANGELES et al., Respondents.
L. H. Gibbons, District Attorney, and Antonio Rossmann for Petitioner.
Burt Pines, City Attorney, Edward C. Farrell, Chief Assistant City Attorney, Kenneth W. Downey, Assistant City Attorney, and Donald D. Stark for Respondents.
We deny Inyo County's motion for imposition of costs (amounting to $1,067.61) and an attorney fee (of $85,267.50) against the adverse party, City of Los Angeles.
The lawsuit is an original mandate action in which Inyo County is the petitioner and Los Angeles the respondent. In 1973 we issued a peremptory writ of mandate directing the City of Los Angeles and its department of water and power to prepare an environmental impact [78 Cal. App. 3d 85] report covering their increased extraction and use of Owens Valley groundwater. (County of Inyo v. Yorty (1973) 32 Cal. App. 3d 795 [108 Cal. Rptr. 377]; see also, County of Inyo v. City of Los Angeles (1976) 61 Cal. App. 3d 91 [132 Cal. Rptr. 167].) As its return to the writ of mandate the City of Los Angeles prepared and filed an environmental impact report. Through its district attorney and its retained special counsel, Inyo County presented briefs, exhibits and argument designed to demonstrate the invalidity of the environmental impact report. On June 27, 1977 we filed a decision sustaining the county's position. We held that the environmental impact report complied with neither the California Environmental Quality Act nor the writ of mandate. In the exercise of our continuing jurisdiction, we directed the city to take "reasonably expeditious action" to comply with the writ. (County of Inyo v. City of Los Angeles (1977) 71 Cal. App. 3d 185 [139 Cal. Rptr. 396].) The state Supreme Court rejected the city's petition for hearing. The county then filed the present motion.
 The parties debate the timeliness of the county's application. In prerogative writ proceedings in the appellate courts the prevailing party may be awarded costs but only by direction of the court in its judgment or before its judgment reaches finality. (Union Trust Co. v. Superior Court (1939) 13 Cal. 2d 541, 543-544 [90 P.2d 582].) The city's charge of tardiness is based upon the "finality" of our June 1977 decision rejecting the city's return to the writ of mandate.
 The claim for conventional costs of $1,067.61 covers the expenses of brief printing, a transcript and service of papers. These apparently embrace only the county's costs of resisting the city's insufficient return to the writ and not all costs since inception of the suit. The request is a piecemeal one. Possibly we need not await the suit's termination before awarding costs. In any event, we take our cue from the cost procedures in trial and appellate litigation generally. In a general way, these provide for costs as an incident to the ultimate judgment in the action. (Code Civ. Proc., §§ 1031, 1032, 1033; Cal. Rules of Court, rule 26(a).) If only as a matter of discretion, we defer action on Inyo County's partial bill for conventional costs until it is incorporated in a complete cost bill at the close of the lawsuit.
[4a] Serrano III described two additional theories grounded largely in federal case law. "The first of these, involv[ed] awards against an [78 Cal. App. 3d 87] opponent who has maintained an unfounded action or defense '"in bad faith, vexatiously, wantonly or for oppressive reasons"' (11 Cal.3d at p. 26 [D'Amico v. Board of Medical Examiners (1974) 11 Cal. 3d 1 (112 Cal. Rptr. 786, 520 P.2d 10)]) ..." (Serrano III at p. 42; but see Williams v. MacDougall (1870) 39 Cal. 80, 85-86).
In describing its attorney fee claim, Inyo County points out that it seeks no payment for civil representation by its district attorney but only the reasonable value of the services of its special counsel, employed by the county since 1976 for the purpose of legal resistance to the proposals [78 Cal. App. 3d 89] of the City of Los Angeles. The county appends a copy of its fiscal year budget, pointing out that its population is small, its per capita costs of government large and its financial resources minuscule in comparison to that of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, whose budget exceeded $92 million in fiscal 1975-1976.
Serrano III adopted the private attorney general theory as a decisional rule in California, at least where the litigation had vindicated a public policy having a constitutional as opposed to a statutory basis. (20 Cal.3d at pp. 46-47.) Almost concurrently with Serrano III, the Legislature adopted the private attorney general concept in statutory form, through the enactment of Code of Civil Procedure section 1021.5. fn. 2 The new statute did not become effective until January 1, 1978, somewhat later than the events underlaying the present claim.
On the assumption that the described benefits flowed statewide, the fee applicant has failed to establish that they were disproportionately important and valuable in comparison to its own. A county is a political subdivision of the state which provides state and local governmental services for its inhabitants. (County of Marin v. Superior Court (1960) 53 Cal. 2d 633, 638-639 [2 Cal. Rptr. 758, 349 P.2d 526].) Inyo County went to court as champion of local environmental values, which it sought to preserve for the benefit of its present and future inhabitants. This action is not a "public interest" lawsuit in the sense that it is waged for values other than the petitioner's. The litigation is self-serving. The victory won by the county in 1977 bulked large enough to warrant the cost of winning it. The necessity for enforcement by Inyo County did not place on it "a burden out of proportion to [its] individual stake in the matter." (Serrano III, supra, 20 Cal.3d at p. 46, fn. 18.) The application thus fails to satisfy a basic demand of the private attorney general concept.
Nothing in Serrano III tempers the "adverse interest" ground for denying the award. The county, to be sure, points to water conservation benefits which its litigation brought to the City of Los Angeles. These benefits were a byproduct of a lawsuit whose main objective has been to delay and limit the city's extraction and export of Owens Valley groundwater. That objective is hostile to the city's interest in the restriction-free utilization of its groundwater resources. Adversity of interest causes rejection of the substantial common benefit theory.
[4b] Finally, we turn to the "vexatious litigant" ground asserted in support of the attorney fee. We assume existence of power to make the award on this ground (see Williams v. MacDougall, supra, 39 Cal. at pp. 85-86), abstain from affirming the power and reject the claim for lack of merit.
We find no bad faith on the part of Los Angeles in the sense of a motive or intention to oppress its opponent in litigation. To equate the misconceptions of the city's environmental impact report with bad faith is indulgence in Monday morning quarterbacking. In prospect, the city's interest would be served by a legally sufficient impact report, not one which evoked judicial rejection. Pending its compliance with our peremptory writ of mandate, Los Angeles' use of surface and groundwater had been restricted by interim restraining orders. (See, e.g., County of Inyo v. City of Los Angeles, supra, 61 Cal.App.3d at p. 91.) To satisfy the writ of mandate through a legally sufficient environmental impact report would provide it a prospect of relief from these restrictions. Environmental litigation is often waged for tacit objectives of delay and attrition. Given the adversary character of the litigation, Inyo County's purpose was to attack the environmental impact report, defeat it if possible and prolong the injunctive limitations on the city's water use. Its resistance to the environmental impact report was not impelled by the report's deficiencies but by its own litigational interests.
The accusation of factually inaccurate papers is de minimis. The accusation and its targets are shaped by the slanted perceptions of contending parties. Here, as elsewhere, the county's specifications fall short of a showing of bad faith.
The motion for costs and attorney fees is denied.
Puglia, P. J., and Evans, J., concurred.
The "private attorney general" phrase was coined by Judge Jerome Frank in a decision which did not involve an attorney fee at all, but rather a private citizen's standing to sue for vindication of a public objective. (Associate Industries v. Ickes (2d Cir. 1943) 134 F.2d 694, 704; Comment (1974) 122 U.Pa.L.Rev. 636, 658.) A per curiam opinion of the federal Supreme Court then superimposed Judge Frank's metaphor--without crediting the author--upon the award of an attorney fee authorized by a federal statute. (Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises (1968) 390 U.S. 400, 402 [19 L. Ed. 2d 1263, 1265-1266, 88 S. Ct. 964]; see also Bradley v. Richmond School Board (1974) 416 U.S. 696, 719 [40 L. Ed. 2d 476, 492-493, 94 S. Ct. 2006].) Judge Frank's apt metaphor attracted appellate opinion writers, for it soon left its restricted statutory mooring and drifted into wider waters, bobbing up in a variety of civil rights and public interest decisions and legal commentaries. (See Fowler v. Schwarzwalder (8th Cir. 1974) 498 F.2d 143, 145; Lee v. Southern Home Sites Corp. (5th Cir. 1971) 444 F.2d 143, 147-148; La Raza Unida v. Volpe (N.D.Cal. 1972) 57 F.R.D. 94, 98-102; Dawson, op. cit., 88 Harv. L.Rev. p. 849 et seq.; Nussbaum, Attorney's Fees in Public Interest Litigation (1973) 48 N.Y.U. L.Rev. 301, 318 et seq.; Notes (1973) 24 Hastings L.J. 933; Comment (1974) 122 U.Pa.L.Rev. 636, 655 et seq.) Because the per curiam opinion in Piggie Park, supra, did not credit the author, Judge Frank's unwitting paternity seems to have been overlooked. Of such stuff are rules of law made.
FN 2. Code of Civil Procedure section 1021.5 provides: "Upon motion, a court may award attorneys' fees to a successful party against one or more opposing parties in any action which has resulted in the enforcement of an important right affecting the public interest if: (a) a significant benefit, whether pecuniary or nonpecuniary, has been conferred on the general public or a large class of persons, (b) the necessity and financial burden of private enforcement are such as to make the award appropriate, and (c) such fees should not in the interest of justice be paid out of the recovery, if any. With respect to actions involving public entities, this section applies to allowances against, but not in favor of, public entities, and no claim shall be required to be filed therefor."
The statute undoubtedly represents the California Legislature's reaction to Alyeska Pipelines Co. v. Wilderness Society, supra, which held that Congress alone could generate the avatar of equitable discretion bearing the private attorney general's mantle. Thus does the evolution of a homogeneous discretionary power permit its heterogeneous descendants to be selectively dispatched.
FN 3. In disposing of the private attorney general theory on substantive grounds, we abstain from several collateral inquiries, such as: (a) Whether Code of Civil Procedure section 1021.5, as a procedural statute in force at the time of this decision, supplies the criterion for the award. (See Bradley v. Richmond School Board, supra, 416 U.S. 696.) (b) Whether there is any reason in law or discretionary equity to follow Serrano III's self-imposed confinement to constitutional vindications. (c) If section 1021.5 governs here, whether its arguable prohibition against awards to public entities governs when two public entities are embroiled. (d) Whether either the decisional or statutory rules governing the fee award impose liability on the City of Los Angeles to pay for a legal victory assertedly won for the benefit of Californians generally.

References: v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v.