Court Opinion

ID: 9579220
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:52:49.724651+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:34:36.231948
License: Public Domain

ZIMMERMAN, Chief Justice,
concurring:
I concur in Justice Russon’s articulation of the proper standard of review for a trial court’s award of attorney fees, and I also reluctantly concur in his affirmance of the trial court’s award of $7,500 for the fees Salmon incurred to defend himself against the informations. However, I agree with the result reached by Justice Durham that Salmon is entitled to reimbursement for reasonable attorney fees incurred in litigating his right to his defense fees. Because neither, the opinion of Justice Russon nor that of Justice Durham otherwise commands a clear majority, the result reached in this opinion announces the court’s result on both issues in this case. However, there is no majority rationale for either result.
I first address the trial court’s award of reasonable defense fees to Salmon. Assuming the proceeding below was a trial based solely on affidavit evidence,1 then I wholeheartedly agree with Justice Russon’s opinion regarding the deference due the trial court’s findings of fact. However, I only reluctantly reach the result that we should affirm the trial court’s $7,500 award in this case. My preferred course would have been to remand the case for additional findings of fact, because the present findings are barely legally sufficient to support the trial court’s ultimate determination that $7,500 was a reasonable award. However, a majority of the court is not willing to follow that course. Accordingly, I explain my concern over the findings for whatever guidance it may provide to trial courts.
The findings in the instant ease were, at best, minimal. Following oral argument on Salmon’s motion for summary judgment, the trial judge issued a memorandum ruling in which he held that Salmon’s claimed fees were “excessive,” while noting that “the evidence, in regards to a reasonable attorney’s fee, ranges from $1,200.00 + to $22,000.00 +.” The court ultimately concluded, “Looking at the entire situation: the type of trials involved; the issues involved; the seriousness of the issues; the difficulty of the issues; the novelty of the issues; the hours involved; and the results of the trial; the court is satisfied that $7,500 would be a reasonable attorney’s fee.” The trial court reiterated this conclusion essentially verbatim in its findings of fact 2 and 3, which together found $7,500 to be a reasonable fee award for Salmon’s defense against the two informations.
As Justice Russon properly notes, our review of a trial court’s factual findings is limited to determining whether the findings are clearly erroneous and whether the trial court’s ultimate conclusion was an abuse of discretion. Baldwin v. Burton, 850 P.2d 1188, 1198 (Utah 1993); Cottonwood Mall Co. v. Sine, 830 P.2d 266, 269 (Utah 1992); Dixie State Bank v. Bracken, 764 P.2d 985, 988 (Utah 1988). This standard of review applies whether the trial court’s findings are based *901on oral or documentary evidence. Utah R.Civ.P. 52(a).2 However, applying that standard of review assumes that we have adequate findings to review.
The findings here appear to me to state little more than the trial court’s ultimate legal conclusion. In contrast, this court has always demanded findings sufficiently detailed to “‘disclose the steps by which the ultimate conclusion on each factual issue was reached.’” Butler, Crockett & Walsh Dev. Corp. v. Pinecrest Pipeline Operating Co., 909 P.2d 225, 231 (Utah 1995) (quoting Acton v. J.B. Deliran, 737 P.2d 996, 999 (Utah 1987)). We demand detailed findings because the reasonableness of an attorney fee award is a highly fact-sensitive legal determination and “ ‘detailed findings are necessary to enable this court to meaningfully review the issues on appeal.’” State v. Ramirez, 817 P.2d 774, 788 (Utah 1991) (quoting State v. Lovegren, 798 P.2d 767, 770 (Utah Ct.App.1990)); see Cottonwood Mall, 830 P.2d at 269 (“Although a trial court has discretion to determine an award of attorney fees, the exercise of that discretion must be based on an evaluation of the evidence.”); Cabrera v. Cottrell, 694 P.2d 622, 624 (Utah 1985) (“An award of attorneys fees must generally be made on the basis of findings of fact supported by the evidence and appropriate conclusions of law.”).
When a trial court’s findings are insufficient to permit meaningful appellate review, this court ordinarily does not make its own factual findings, but remands the ease for the entry of additional findings. Ramirez, 817 P.2d at 788; Acton, 737 P.2d at 999; Rucker v. Dalton, 598 P.2d 1336, 1339 (Utah 1979). We do so because the trial court should resolve factual inconsistencies before we review an issue on appeal. Otherwise, we would have to resolve those factual inconsistencies by making our own findings, and “it is not the function of an appellate court to make findings of fact.” Rucker, 598 P.2d at 1338; see Ramirez, 817 P.2d at 788 (holding that appellate court cannot assume trial court would have found facts to support its decision when ambiguity of facts makes such an assumption unreasonable); see also State v. Pena, 869 P.2d 932, 935-36, 938-39 (Utah 1994) (explaining why appellate court defers to trial court on factual and fact-dependent issues). The findings in the instant ease are so close to being legally inadequate for meaningful appellate review that I would have preferred to remand this case for additional findings.
However, I conclude that the trial court’s findings are minimally sufficient to withstand a remand. The trial court made clear that it considered the evidence in light of some of the factors outlined in Cottonwood Mall, 830 P.2d at 269, even if the court failed to make any findings relative to those factors. In addition, because the trial court could properly find that Salmon’s fees were “excessive” from the court’s independent evaluation of Salmon’s attorney bills, it could properly reduce the award sua sponte. See Dixie State Bank, 764 P.2d at 989 (citing Appliance and Heating Supply, Inc. v. Telaroli, 682 P.2d 867, 868 (Utah 1984); Sears v. Riemersma, 655 P.2d 1105, 1110 (Utah 1982)). Although we ordinarily demand a more detailed explanation of the reasons for a sua sponte reduction, see Sears, 655 P.2d at 1110, the trial court’s oral ruling from the bench that Salmon’s bills were “excessive” is minimally sufficient to support the reduction here. Thus, while I would have preferred to remand for the entry of additional findings, I reluctantly concur that the trial court’s award of $7,500 for Salmon’s defense fees should be affirmed.
I now address Salmon’s entitlement to a reasonable fee award for litigating his statutory right to be indemnified for the reasonable cost of his defense. I concur in the result of Justice Durham’s opinion to the extent that she holds that Salmon is entitled to an award of reasonable attorney fees for litigating his attorney fee claim. I agree that lack of such an award would undermine the purpose of section 63-30a-2, which is to in*902demnify a vindicated employee. However, I cannot agree with her main justification for that result without some additional explanation.
Justice Durham analogizes Salmon’s case to typical cases where attorney fees incurred on appeal are awarded whenever attorney fees were initially authorized by statute or contract. In such a case, both the underlying action and the appeal focus on enforcing a substantive right that incidentally includes the right to attorney fees. As Justice Rus-son points out, the plain language of section 63-30a-2 would appear to limit Salmon’s substantive right to those attorney fees “necessarily incurred in the defense of [the] indictment or information.” Utah Code Ann. § 63-30a-2. Looking solely at the language of the statute, Justice Russon would appear to be correct that Salmon is not entitled to attorney fees in the instant action because this action was technically not part of Salmon’s defense to the informations.
However, Salmon could not raise the attorney fee issue in the underlying proceedings because the County was not a party to the underlying criminal actions against him. This anomaly sets section 63-30a-2 apart from the vast majority of our cases which rely on a statutory or contractual provision for attorney fees, where the attorney fee issue can be litigated in the same proceeding as the substantive right to which the award of fees is attached.
But because vindicated employees can never litigate their right to fees under section 63-30a-2 in the course of the underlying criminal proceedings and must bring a separate civil proceeding to do so, the fact that two different proceedings are involved should not undermine Salmon’s statutory entitlement to indemnification. To so hold would elevate form over substance. When confronted with similar fee-shifting statutes that are silent on the right to receive attorney fees for litigating the right to such fees, the federal courts have not hesitated to broadly construe the fee-shifting statute as authorizing the payment of fees for litigating the right to the fees. See Gagne v. Maher, 594 F.2d 336, 344 (2d Cir.1979) (“[D]enying attorneys’ fees for time spent in obtaining them would ‘dilute the value of a fees award by forcing attorneys into extensive, uncompensated litigation in order to gain any fees.’ ” (quoting Stanford Daily v. Zurcher, 64 F.R.D. 680, 683-84 (N.D.Cal.1974), aff'd 550 F.2d 464 (9th Cir.1977), rev’d on other grounds, 436 U.S. 547, 98 S.Ct. 1970, 56 L.Ed.2d 525 (1978)), aff'd on other grounds, 448 U.S. 122, 100 S.Ct. 2570, 65 L.Ed.2d 653 (1980).
In addition, the United States Supreme Court has stated that a fee-shifting statute such as section 63-30a~2 “favors treating a ease as an inclusive whole, rather than as atomized line-items.” Commissioner, INS v. Jean, 496 U.S. 154, 161-62, 110 S.Ct. 2316, 2320-21, 110 L.Ed.2d 134 (1990); see also Sullivan v. Hudson, 490 U.S. 877, 888, 109 S.Ct. 2248, 2256, 104 L.Ed.2d 941 (1989) (where administrative proceedings are “necessary to the attainment of the results Congress sought to promote by providing for fees, they should be considered part and parcel of the action for which fees may be awarded”), cited in Jean, 496 U.S. at 162, 110 S.Ct. at 2320-21. Accordingly, we should consider the civil proceeding required to secure the indemnification benefits of section 63-30a-2 “part and parcel” of an acquitted employee’s defense to a criminal indictment or information.
Finally, an award of a reasonable fee for seeking defense fees will not encourage exorbitant fee requests or generate needless litigation. In determining a reasonable fee for the fee litigation, a district court has the discretion to assess whether the fee requested for the fee litigation is reasonable and whether the employee or employer unreasonably generated or protracted the fee litigation.
In sum, I concur with Justice Russon that the trial court’s award of $7,500 for Salmon’s defense fees should be affirmed. However, I concur with Justice Durham that Salmon is entitled to a reasonable fee for litigating his statutory right to indemnification for his defense fees.

. Although we treat the proceeding below as an evidentiary hearing or trial, the record reveals no agreement by the parties that what they consistently styled as a "summary judgment” action was in reality something else. As a result, we cannot be certain that both parties clearly understood the evidentiary burden they were required to meet in the proceeding before the trial court. While it is not wholly inappropriate to assume that what was done without express objection was done with consent, I would have preferred to require the trial court to clarify the parties' understanding on remand.

. Hence, Justice Durham's assertion that "there is no justification for any deference to the trial court” because this court has before it everything relied on by the trial court is flatly in conflict with the Utah Rules of Civil Procedure. See Utah R.Civ.P. 52(a) ("Findings of fact, whether based on oral or documentary evidence, shall not be set aside unless clearly erroneous...." (emphasis added)).