Court Opinion

ID: 9546368
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:28:30.190404+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:16:21.802049
License: Public Domain

DURHAM, J.,
concurring.
I agree with the majority’s disposition and write to comment on the court’s discussion of the claim for attorney fees.
Because this is a contract case, the task before the court is to discern the intention of the parties in entering into the following agreement:
“Attorney Fees. If suit or action is instituted in connection with any controversy arising out of this Agreement, the prevailing party shall be entitled to recover in addition to costs such sum as the court may adjudge reasonable as attorney fees, including any fees and costs on appeal.”
As the majority states, this court decided in Carlson v. Blumenstein, 293 Or 494, 501, 651 P2d 710 (1982), that the court will construe contractual terms like “prevailing party” *581and “successful party” to have the statutory meaning provided in ORS 20.096(5) (“ ‘prevailing part/ means the party in whose favor final judgment or decree is rendered”) unless other contract language or other evidence demonstrates that the parties intended a different meaning. 324 Or at 579. Neither party quarrels with that proposition here, nor do I.
In Carlson, this court cautioned that the statutory policy entitling one party to recover an attorney fee simply because the court enters the final judgment in favor of that party “may be an unanticipated result, not contemplated by the framers of the statute.” 293 Or at 501 n 4. As this case illustrates, contracting parties who incorporate the concept of “prevailing party,” as explained in Carlson, into their agreement also may be surprised to realize the consequences of that choice.
Plaintiffs filed several claims and defendants filed no counterclaims, except their request for prevailing party attorney fees. According to the Court of Appeals, plaintiffs lost on most of their claims; defendants successfully defended against more claims than they lost. However, defendants did not obtain affirmative relief. According to Carlson, the contract entitles plaintiffs to a prevailing party fee because they obtained a judgment in their favor. The fact that plaintiffs lost more claims than they won is irrelevant to the fact that they “prevailed” in the legal sense.
The choice of contracting parties to award attorney fees to the party that “prevails” in the action seems to work well in cases where the plaintiff’s complaint states a single claim, regardless of the variety of forms of relief requested on that claim,1 and the defendant files no counterclaims. In that *582circumstance, the policy embodied in ORS 20.096(5) corresponds easily with the parties’ contractual intention to award an attorney fee to the party in whose favor the court enters judgment. The same is true if the plaintiff files multiple contract breach claims, the defendant files no counterclaims, and the plaintiff succeeds on all claims or none.
A more complex analysis occurs where each party establishes a right to monetary relief against the other. (I say “complex” rather than “surprising” because Carlson was decided in 1982 and drew some attention to these problems.) In that circumstance, the court, applying Carlson, offsets the respective recoveries to arrive at a net monetary judgment and awards an attorney fee to the party in whose favor the court enters judgment. 324 Or at 579.
Defendants’ dissatisfaction here with the court’s application of Carlson may stem from a misunderstanding of the analysis that the court follows in determining the prevailing party. In deciding which party prevailed in a legal sense, the court does not add up the number of individual claims on which each party prevailed and compare the respective sums. The court does not subtract the number of claims on which a party did not succeed from those on which the party did succeed. The court does not assess, according to some objective or subjective standard, the so-called “importance” to the plaintiff of individual claims or of the action viewed in its entirety, nor does it attempt to evaluate the “importance” to the defendant of a successful defense against one or all claims. The court does not compare and contrast a party’s prayer in the complaint for various types or ranges of relief with the relief that that party actually receives in the judgment. Because the court offsets the amounts of the parties’ respective damage recoveries, if any, the court does not decide that a party has prevailed in the action solely because that party is entitled to some monetary relief against the other. Some of these issues may be relevant to the determination of a reasonable attorney fee. However, in deciding which party prevailed, the court asks only: In whose favor is the judgment entered?
The complexity of the analysis multiplies where both parties are entitled to some relief, but one party succeeds on *583a claim for nonmonetary relief, such as a declaratory judgment, an accounting or other equitable remedy, or a special remedy specified in the contract or a statute. In that circumstance, the attorney fee issue may compel the court to contrast the value, in a general sense, of one party’s successful claim for monetary relief against the other party’s successful claim for nonmonetary relief. Conceivably, the attorney fee issue may force the court to make such a comparison between each party’s successful claims for different forms of nonmon-etary relief. Those convoluted inquiries — none of which is presented here — bear the characteristics of a metaphysical attempt to compare the incomparable. When the court somehow resolves those thorny issues, the contract entitles the party in whose favor the court enters judgment to an attorney fee.
I offer no particular solution to problems of this sort. I draw attention to those complexities because contracting parties should realize the profound analytical problems that they can create for courts when they agree only that, in the event of a contractual dispute, the “prevailing party” shall recover attorney fees.
Defendants’ arguments suggest that they expect to recover attorney fees because they prevailed on a larger number of individual contractual disputes. The contract here lends some support to that contention because it refers to the institution of suit or action “in connection with any controversy arising out of this Agreement.” (Emphasis added.) That wording was not present in the contract examined in Carlson. However, the majority correctly applies Carlson to these facts because the contract entitles the “prevailing party” to a fee regardless of the number of contractual controversies or the parties’ relative successes and failures in the action.
Defendants’ construct, as I understand it, has some appeal. It would entitle each party to a reasonable attorney fee according to each party’s success or failure on each claim or controversy and award a net attorney fee to one party after offsetting the parties’ respective attorney fee claims. Under that model, each party, including a party that successfully defended against multiple claims, could assert a contractual right to a reasonable attorney fee for its successes, whether or *584not the party also obtained the final judgment in the case. Neither party would be forced to acquiesce in a trial court’s oftentimes subjective attempt to take into account the reasonableness of the parties’ claims and defenses, and their relative wins and losses on each issue, in deciding what fee is “reasonable.”2 See ORS 20.075 (setting forth factors to be considered in awarding attorney fees authorized by statute).
If contracting parties believe that defendants’ model for attorney fee awards should control their contractual relationships, they are required, as Carlson indicates, to exhibit that intention through express terms in the contract or through other evidence.
I concur.

 This court treats a “claim” as “ ‘an aggregate of operative facts giving rise to a right or rights * * * which will be enforced by the courts.’ ” Peterson v. Temple, 323 Or 322, 331, 918 P2d 413 (1996) (quoting Dean v. Exotic Veneers, Inc., 271 Or 188, 193, 531 P2d 266 (1975), and Clark on Code Pleading 127 (2d ed 1947)) (definition of “cause of action”). Under the modern conception of a claim, a single event giving rise to judicial relief — say, a breach of contract — is one claim and does not become several “claims” because the plaintiff seeks multiple forms of relief (e.g., damages, declaratory relief, and an injunction) on that claim. See Peterson, 323 Or at 331 (under Dean, “claims for breach of contract and quantum meruit recovery arising from the same factual transaction involve the same ‘cause of action’ ”).

 One further drawback of conditioning the contractual right to an attorney fee in part on a trial court’s assessment of the reasonableness of the parties’ claims and defenses and the magnitude of each party’s wins and losses is that the trial court may not find the relevant facts and explain why it reached its conclusion as to those issues. ORCP 68 C(4)(c)(ii) provides in part that “[n]o findings of fact or conclusions of law shall be necessary” in denying or awarding an attorney fee. I commend the numerous trial courts that routinely support their fee awards with appropriate findings of fact and conclusions of law despite the policy embodied in that rule. If a trial court chooses to make no findings of fact or conclusions of law to support its award or denial of fees, the order, for many practical purposes, is insulated from appellate review. Defendants’ model obviates that drawback by creating a contractual right to a reasonable fee for success on each claim, notwithstanding the potentially differing views of the parties and the court about the reasonableness of claims or defenses or the importance of specific wins and losses.