Opinion ID: 1134428
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Important right

Text: Although section 1021.5 provides no concrete standard or test against which a court may determine whether the right vindicated in a particular case is sufficiently important to justify a private attorney general fee award, the statutory language and the pertinent federal authorities provide at least some guidance in this area. (5) First, as we have already suggested, the broad statutory language and the federal precedents indicate that a right need not be constitutional in nature to justify the application of the private attorney general doctrine; the federal cases have applied the doctrine to the vindication of both constitutional [6] and statutory [7] rights. Second, the Legislature obviously intended that there be some selectivity, on a qualitative basis, in the award of attorney fees under the statute, for section 1021.5 specifically alludes to litigation which vindicates important rights and does not encompass the enforcement of any or all statutory rights. Thus, again like the federal cases, the statute directs the judiciary to exercise judgment in attempting to ascertain the strength or societal importance of the right involved. (6) Of course, important rights are not necessarily confined to any one subject or field. As the variety of federal cases attests, the private attorney doctrine may find proper application in litigation involving, for example, racial discrimination, [8] the rights of mental patients, [9] legislative reapportionment [10] and, most significantly for the instant case, environmental protection. [11] In litigation concerning the application of statutorily based rights in these various fields, past decisions suggest that in determining the importance of the particular vindicated right, courts should generally realistically assess the significance of that right in terms of its relationship to the achievement of fundamental legislative goals. (See, e.g., La Raza Unida v. Volpe, supra, 57 F.R.D. 94, 99.) (2c) In the instant case, plaintiffs maintain that the important right which they have vindicated through this litigation is the basic principle that a subdivision may not be approved by a municipality if it is inconsistent with the locality's governing general plan. (7) As plaintiffs suggest, the legislative history of the Subdivision Map Act illuminates the Legislature's acute awareness that approval of subdivisions which are inconsistent with a locality's general plan subverts the integrity ... of the local planning process. (Subcommittee on Premature Subdivisions, Staff Recommendations for Legislative Action (Jan. 15, 1971) p. 4.) To preserve the integrity of the general plan concept, the Legislature enacted Government Code sections 66473.5 and 66474.60, subd. (c) (quoted in fn. 2, ante ), mandating that a subdivision map may not be approved unless the appropriate agencies first find that the subdivision is consistent with the applicable general plan. (2d) Plaintiffs argue, with much force, that once a general plan has been formulated, the public has an overriding interest in the faithful enforcement of the guidelines established by the plan as applied to proposed subdivisions. (Cf. Youngblood v. Board of Supervisors (1978) 22 Cal.3d 644, 651-653 [150 Cal. Rptr. 242, 586 P.2d 556]; O'Loane v. O'Rourke (1965) 231 Cal. App.2d 774, 782 [42 Cal. Rptr. 283].) Although defendants do not challenge plaintiffs' claim that the enforcement of the public's right to conforming subdivisions constitutes an important right within the meaning of section 1021.5, they do contest plaintiffs' assertion that the instant litigation vindicated any such right. Defendants emphasize, in this regard, that while plaintiffs' complaint asserted, inter alia, that the subdivision in fact conflicted with the general plan, the Court of Appeal in the Woodland Hills I decision did not find it necessary to resolve that issue, but instead set aside the approval of the subdivision simply because the pertinent city authorities had failed to make specific findings as to the consistency of the subdivision with the general plan. Defendants contend that the only right vindicated by the litigation is the statutory requirement mandating specific findings (Code Civ. Proc., § 1094.5; see Topanga Assn. For a Scenic Community, supra, 11 Cal.3d 506), and that in this context such statutory right constitutes merely a technical requirement and does not rise to the level of an important right for purposes of section 1021.5. In arguing that the right vindicated by plaintiffs' litigation must necessarily be determined by the narrow holding of the Court of Appeal opinion in Woodland Hills I, defendants raise an issue that is endemic to the application of numerous statutory attorney fee provisions. A similar question, for example, arose in the recent case of White v. Beal (E.D.Pa. 1978) 447 F. Supp. 788. In White, plaintiffs' suit challenged the validity of a Pennsylvania statute on two grounds: (1) as a denial of equal protection and (2) as in conflict with a provision of the federal Social Security Act and invalid under the supremacy clause. After the court granted plaintiffs summary judgment on the basis of the Social Security Act claim, plaintiffs moved for an attorney fee award under the Civil Rights Attorney Fee's Award Act; defendants argued in response that no award was appropriate under the statutory civil rights provision because the plaintiff's equal protection claim had never been finally adjudicated. The White court rejected defendants' contention, observing, inter alia, that a denial of attorneys' fees on the basis that the constitutional claim was not adjudicated ... would only serve to thwart both the judicial policy against unnecessarily deciding issues of constitutional dimension and the purpose for which the Act was passed. (447 F. Supp. at p. 794.) Finding that plaintiffs' constitutional claim was not insubstantial and that the statutory and constitutional claims arose out of a common nucleus of operative fact ( id., at pp. 793-794), the court held that under the circumstances of that case attorney fees should be awarded under the Civil Rights Attorney Fee's Award Act. In recent years, a number of additional federal authorities have similarly indicated the propriety of awarding attorney fees under comparable circumstances. (See, e.g., Kimbrough v. Arkansas Activities Assn. (8th Cir.1978) 574 F.2d 423, 426-427; Southeast Legal Defense Group v. Adams (D.Ore. 1977) 436 F. Supp. 891; Lund v. Affleck (D.R.I. 1977) 442 F. Supp. 1109, 1112-1114.) (8) As these federal decisions teach, the fact that a plaintiff is able to win his case on a preliminary issue, thereby obviating the adjudication of a theoretically more important right, should not necessarily foreclose the plaintiff from obtaining attorney fees under a statutory provision. When a defendant's action is invalid on a number of grounds, it would be both unfair and contrary to the legislative purpose of section 1021.5 to deprive a plaintiff of attorney fees simply because the court decides the case in plaintiff's favor on a simpler or less important theory. (Cf. Wilderness Society v. Morton, supra, 495 F.2d 1026, 1034-1035; Sierra Club v. Lynn (W.D.Tex. 1973) 364 F. Supp. 834, 847, revd. in part (5th Cir.1974) 502 F.2d 43.) On the other hand, of course, the fact that a plaintiff prevails on a technical preliminary issue does not necessarily demonstrate that his additional claims have sufficient merit to warrant the conclusion that the action served to vindicate an important right. Under such circumstances, the trial court, utilizing its traditional equitable discretion (now codified in § 1021.5), must realistically assess the litigation and determine, from a practical perspective, whether or not the action served to vindicate an important right so as to justify an attorney fee award under a private attorney general theory. (2e) In the instant case, the trial court never undertook such an inquiry because section 1021.5 did not exist at the time it ruled on plaintiffs' attorney fee motion. Although defendants claim that plaintiffs' success in this case rested simply on technical grounds, the Woodland Hills I court's detailed discussion of the various administrative proceedings in this case (44 Cal. App.3d at pp. 834-838) indicates, at the very least, that the court confronted substantial questions as to the consistency of the proposed subdivision and Los Angeles' currently applicable general plan. Under these circumstances, we believe that the trial court should determine in the first instance, from a realistic perspective, whether or not the litigation has resulted in the enforcement of an important right affecting the public interest within the meaning of section 1021.5.