Opinion ID: 2617755
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Superior Court Erred in Augmenting Its Award Based on Plaintiff's Failure to Accept a Pre-Trial Settlement Offer.

Text: Doyle appeals the superior court's increase of partial attorney's fees from 50 percent of actual fees to 70 percent of actual fees based on his exceptional degree of litigious tenacity. The court based its view on Doyle's refusal to accept Peabody's settlement offer prior to trial: Although no bad faith litigation is attributed to plaintiff, in the Court's view plaintiff's case was disastrously weak on both the law and the evidence. Setting aside the former, since a rule of law can always be debated, the facts certainly had to have been known to plaintiff. Foreseeing what his own testimony and the testimony of the neighborhood would amount to, plaintiff's failure to settle with the defendant on an each walk away basis seems extremely ill-advised. Reluctantly the Court concludes that plaintiff pressed this suit, which at one time he would have settled for less than one-sixth the total attorney's bill (by the Court's estimate), in the face of a determined adversary who did not conceal the strengths of his case. In so doing the Court believes plaintiff demonstrated that exceptional degree of litigious tenacity which justifies an augmented fee award above that which partially compensates the prevailing party. The Court awards 50% of actual fees as partial compensation, augmenting the award to a total of 70%. Our recent decisions in Myers v. Snow White Cleaners & Linen Supply, 770 P.2d 750, 752-53 (Alaska 1989), and Day v. Moore, 771 P.2d 436, 438-39 (Alaska 1989), counsel that Civil Rule 68 is the exclusive mechanism for penalizing a party for its failure to accept a pre-trial settlement offer. Thus, the superior court erred in taking past settlement negotiations into account in making an award under Civil Rule 82.