Opinion ID: 2518429
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: arbitration act fee provisions

Text: ¶ 16 Mr. Gallacher next contends that he should be awarded attorney fees under the Utah Arbitration Act's fee provisions. The outcome of this issue depends to a significant degree on the standard of review that we apply to the trial court's ruling. We have not previously had occasion to review a trial court's express denial of attorney fees in an arbitration case and, accordingly, we must set forth this standard for the first time. ¶ 17 In assessing a standard of review for an issue, we take into account several considerations. We have previously stated: [A] standard of review allocates discretion between trial and appellate courts. In determining the appropriateness of a particular allocation of responsibility for deciding an issue or class of issues, account should be taken of the relative capabilities of each level of the court system to take evidence and make findings of fact in the face of conflicting evidence, on the one hand, and to set binding jurisdiction-wide policy, on the other. State v. Thurman, 846 P.2d 1256, 1266 (Utah 1993) (citations omitted). Furthermore, [t]he appropriate standard of review to be applied to the determination of any particular issue or class of issues is fixed by reference to the pertinent source of law, be it constitution, statute, rule, or appellate court decision. Id. (citation omitted). ¶ 18 The award of attorney fees is typically a matter of law, which we review for correctness. R.T. Nielson Co. v. Cook, 2002 UT 11, ¶ 16, 40 P.3d 1119. This, however, is not true where the fees are predicated upon findings of fact, in which case we review the award of fees for an abuse of discretion. Warner v. DMG Color, Inc., 2000 UT 102, ¶ 21, 20 P.3d 868. In cases of arbitration, the Utah Arbitration Act grants discretion to trial courts to assess attorney fees, if appropriate, after considering the facts of the case. Utah Code Ann. § 78-31a-126 (2003). Thus, recognizing the broad discretion given to trial courts in these matters, we review a trial court's decision to grant or not to grant attorney fees under the Utah Arbitration Act for an abuse of discretion. ¶ 19 We now turn to Mr. Gallacher's argument, reviewing for abuse of discretion the trial court's decision not to award him attorney fees. His argument here in many ways echoes his first: that deGroot's repeated motions undermine the policy of the Utah Arbitration Act to discourage relitigation of valid awards, and that Mr. Gallacher should thus be compensated for his needless efforts in resisting the deGroot motions. Mr. Gallacher requested attorney fees under Utah Code section 78-31a-16, [3] which has since been modified and is now found at Utah Code section 78-31a-126. [4] The revised language of the provision does not alter the outcome of this case. ¶ 20 Mr. Gallacher insists that an award of fees to him is endorsed, if not mandated, by our analysis of the Utah Arbitration Act's fee provisions in Buzas Baseball, Inc. v. Salt Lake Trappers, Inc., 925 P.2d 941 (Utah 1996). In Buzas, the trial court had, as in this case, declined to award attorney fees. [5] ¶ 21 In Buzas, we stated that the fact that the Utah Arbitration Act explicitly provides for an award of attorney fees suggests that our policies favor the enforceability of arbitration awards and discourage relitigation of valid awards. Id. at 953. We were careful to state, however, that our determination that attorney fees were recoverable in Utah arbitration proceedings should not be interpreted to mean that we were reading a prevailing party standard into the fee provisions of the Utah Arbitration Act that was not otherwise contained in its text. Id. at 953-54. We noted that the grant of authority to award attorney fees is unlike most other grants of such authority by statute in Utah. This is because the Utah Arbitration Act provides no guidance to the court in determining when to award attorney fees, which most Utah statutes do. Id. at 953 (citations omitted). ¶ 22 We determined that by selecting the word may to describe the authority of the trial court, the legislature clearly signaled an intention to yield discretion to courts over whether to award attorney fees for matters covered by the statute. Id. Accordingly, we attempted to offer cautious direction regarding the exercise of discretion to trial courts. We observed that the policies underlying the Utah Arbitration Act serve as useful guide-posts for the exercise of discretion. We limited our guidance, however, to circumstances in which an award of attorney fees would not be proper, leaving unaddressed possible scenarios in which a trial court would abuse its discretion by failing to award attorney fees. ¶ 23 As noted above, the statute relied on in Buzas has changed. The modified statute expressly limits attorney fee awards to a prevailing party, stating: On application of a prevailing party to a contested judicial proceeding ..., the court may add reasonable attorney's fees. Utah Code Ann. § 78-31a-126. A prevailing party is not, however, entitled to a fee award as a matter of right. The modified statutory language delegates the discretion to award fees to the trial court. Moreover, the modified statutory language offers no guidance as to when attorney fees would or would not be appropriate. Thus, both the old statute and the modified version, along with Buzas, can fairly be read to recognize the principle upon which we rest our holding here: that a trial court may properly exercise its discretion under the Utah Arbitration Act by denying attorney fees to a party who prevails against a challenge to the validity of an arbitration award. ¶ 24 The trial court adequately articulated its reasons for declining to award Mr. Gallacher his attorney fees despite the fact that he had prevailed against deGroot's postarbitration motions. We do not conclude that the trial court abused its discretion in so holding. Furthermore, when stripped to their essence, Mr. Gallacher's objections to the trial court's exercise of discretion amount to an invitation for this court to inject into section 78-31a-126 a requirement awarding attorney fees to a prevailing party. We decline this invitation, opting instead to interpret the presence of the discretionary term may, coupled with the absence of any guiding or limiting standard, to communicate a legislative intention to vest in the trial courts broad, discretionary authority over attorney fee awards.