Court Opinion

ID: 9946131
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-02-29 15:08:06.248201+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:25:27.431384
License: Public Domain

NOT FOR PUBLICATION WITHOUT THE
                               APPROVAL OF THE APPELLATE DIVISION
        This opinion shall not "constitute precedent or be binding upon any court." Although it is posted on the
     internet, this opinion is binding only on the parties in the case and its use in other cases is limited. R. 1:36-3.

                                                        SUPERIOR COURT OF NEW JERSEY
                                                        APPELLATE DIVISION
                                                        DOCKET NO. A-3904-21

WICK SHOPPING PLAZA
ASSOCIATES, LLC,

          Plaintiff-Respondent,

v.

NANDANA LLC, SHIVAJI
LIMITED LIABILITY
COMPANY, HARIVENKATESH
RADHAKRISHNAN,
SARAVANAN THANGARAJU,
and PRADEEP KUMAR
VASIREDDI,

          Defendants,

and

SURESH MUTHUPANDI,

     Defendant-Appellant.
_____________________________

                   Submitted January 9, 2024 – Decided February 29, 2024

                   Before Judges Gooden Brown and Puglisi.
            On appeal from the Superior Court of New Jersey, Law
            Division, Middlesex County, Docket No. L-0245-21.

            Suresh Muthupandi, appellant pro se.

            Jamison & Jamison, attorneys for respondent (Paul
            Thomas Jamison, on the brief).

PER CURIAM

      Defendant Suresh Muthupandi (defendant) appeals from the trial court's

July 8, 2022 judgment and order awarding legal fees and costs to plaintiff Wick

Shopping Plaza Associates, LLC totaling $52,658.89. We affirm in part and

reverse and remand in part for entry of an amended judgment.

                                       I.

      Because we write primarily for the parties, who are familiar with the

record, we limit our recitation to those facts necessary to decide the issues on

appeal. In January 2015, Nandana, LLC (Nandana) executed a lease to rent

plaintiff's commercial property in Edison. Defendant signed a personal guaranty

of all the obligations under the lease. In March 2015, Nandana assigned the

lease to Shivaji Limited Liability Company (Shivaji), and defendant reaffirmed

his obligations under the lease.

      In 2020, defendant and Shivaji failed to pay rent and other obligations due

under the lease. In June 2020, plaintiff served defendant notice of arrears

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totaling $15,211.98. Pursuant to the lease terms, defendant had three days to

pay the arrears to cure the breach, but he failed to do so. The following month,

plaintiff served defendant notice that he was considered a holdover tenant on a

month-to-month basis because the lease had expired in April. On two weeks'

notice to plaintiff, defendant vacated the premises on December 15, 2020.

      Plaintiff filed a complaint alleging breach of contract and seeking to

enforce plaintiff's personal guaranty.        On June 8 and 9, 2023, the court

conducted a trial without a jury. Among other witnesses, plaintiff's bookkeeper

testified to the various amounts plaintiff claimed were due, relying in part on a

detailed spreadsheet entered into the record. Although defendant did not contest

liability, he disputed the amount owed.

      On June 9, 2022, the court found in favor of plaintiff, memorializing its

reasons in an oral decision on the record:

                    What this [c]ourt is grappling with is what is that
            amount to be paid? We have the plaintiff's counsel who
            summarized that his belief, based on accounting and all
            of his witnesses['] testimony, is that $60,437.78 is due
            without any credits for pre-payments and payments, for
            instance, with security deposit of the rent and of
            utilities as an example.

                  The defendant does not argue that rent and
            common area maintenance charges are to be paid but
            does argue the following. Well, the [c]ourt finds the
            following. The [c]ourt finds that judgment shall be in

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             favor of the plaintiff. However, that amount, this is
             under the [seven]-day rule.[1] I'm going to ask counsel
             for plaintiff to come up with an accounting in the form
             of an order.

                    Show it to defense counsel as well. You're going
             to come up with a dollar certain. Because the [c]ourt is
             not equipped to go through P-12 and take out the
             following charges. The judgment amount shall, of
             course, reflect the proper credits for security deposits
             and other credits. But the [c]ourt will specifically
             disallow any accrued interest on amounts paid or due
             for either sewer or water during the period of 2020.

                   The [c]ourt shall not permit any late charges or
             interest accrued for that sewer or water payment. . . .

                   . . . The [c]ourt instructs the plaintiff's counsel to
             attach to this under the [seven]-day rule a detailed
             interest breakdown of all amounts that are due and all
             interest that will be charged thereupon.

                   The [c]ourt also finds that the defendant vacated
             the premises as of November [30], 2020. And so no
             interest, no rent, no common area maintenance or any
             other charges, including any accrued interest thereon
             will be permitted after November 30[], 2020.

       The judge urged counsel to consult with each other to arrive at a dollar

amount "agreed upon by all of the parties," because he was "loath[] to try to

come up [with] a dollar amount, considering that much of this . . . [was] mired

in accruing and continued accruing interest costs . . . on charges that [were] not

1
    Rule 1:5-1.
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. . . permitted." The court also denied without prejudice plaintiff's motion for

attorney's fees, subject to its filing a conforming motion and supporting

documentation pursuant to Rule 4:42-9(b).

      Plaintiff re-filed a motion for attorney's fees along with its proposed order

of judgment. Plaintiff also filed a certification of counsel that explained its

revised accounting which reversed certain charges, fees and interest. Appended

to the certification were two spreadsheets:        an amended version of the

accounting the bookkeeper referred to at trial, showing the reversal of amounts

disallowed by the court; and a detail of the amounts due and payments made for

sewer, water, rent, taxes, insurance, late fees and interest. The total amount

sought was $34,934.09, which included outstanding sewer charges totaling

$5,417.86 and interest totaling $8,162.60.

      Defendant submitted a letter asserting the correct amount of the sewer bill

was $3,350.92, objecting to the attorney's fees billed for updating and creating

the spreadsheets, and generally disputing plaintiff's accounting.

      On July 8, 2022, the court entered judgment in favor of plaintiff for

$52,658.89, comprised of the $34,934.09 judgment plus $17,724.80 in attorney's

fees and costs. The court's order states:

            Plaintiff is permitted to recover reasonable attorney's
            fees pursuant to R. 4:88-4 and R. 4:42-9(b). However,

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            it is not reasonable to compensate [p]laintiff's attorney
            for travel time and time spent creating a spreadsheet for
            this [c]ourt to distill [p]laintiff's "Aging Detail"
            document. Fees have been accordingly reduced.

      This appeal follows.

      Although defendant's brief points are not a model of clarity, we glean he

seeks to raise three issues: he was ordered to pay an incorrect amount for sewer

charges; he should not have to pay attorney's fees related to correcting plaintiff's

books; and the eighteen percent interest should have been calculated on the

outstanding balance of the security deposit, not on the outstanding balance owed

after defendant moved out of the premises. Plaintiff's brief on appeal contends

the sewer charges were correct and the attorney's fee award was within the

court's discretion, but does not squarely address the issue of interest.

                                        II.

      A court's findings "are considered binding on appeal when supported by

adequate, substantial and credible evidence." Rova Farms Resort, Inc. v. Invs.

Ins. Co., 65 N.J. 474, 484 (1974). On appeal from a bench trial, this court

"give[s] deference to the trial court that heard the witnesses, sifted the competing

evidence, and made reasoned conclusions." Griepenburg v. Twp. of Ocean, 220

N.J. 239, 254 (2015).

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      This court should not "disturb the factual findings and legal conclusions

of the trial judge unless we are convinced that they are so manifestly

unsupported by or inconsistent with the competent, relevant, and reasonably

credible evidence as to offend the interests of justice." Rova Farms, 65 N.J. at

484 (quoting Fagliarone v. Twp. of N. Bergen, 78 N.J. Super. 154, 155 (1963)).

      "[A] reviewing court will disturb a trial court's award of counsel fees 'only

on the rarest of occasion, and then only because of a clear abuse of discretion. '"

Litton Indus., Inc. v. IMO Indus., Inc., 200 N.J. 372, 386 (2009) (quoting

Packard-Bamberger & Co., Inc. v. Collier, 167 N.J. 427, 444 (2001) (internal

quotation marks omitted)).

      Guided by these standards, we address defendant's contentions in turn.

With regard to the sewer charges, defendant's claim the court awarded the

incorrect amount is belied by the documentation in the record. The bookkeeper's

testimony, which was supported by the spreadsheet and copies of the estimated

and actual sewer bills, established defendant owed $1,066.94 2 for 2018 (billed

2
  Defendant's figures do not include any amount owed for 2018, but the record
reflects a bill of $2,066.94 with a payment of $1,000, leaving $1,066.94
outstanding. Although the accounting incorrectly reflected $2,066.94 as the
amount due, apparently the correct figure was used in calculating the total
amount due, as noted above.
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                                        7
in 2019); $2,028.62 for 2019 (billed in 2020); and $1,322.303 in 2020 (billed in

2021), for a total of $5,417.86. We are unpersuaded by defendant's argument

he owed a lesser sum. The court's order for this amount is supported by the

evidence in the record, and we see no reason to disturb it.

      As to the attorney's fees, plaintiff's motion was supported by an itemized

certificate of legal services and costs. Contrary to defendant's contention, the

trial court disallowed travel time and time billed for creating a spreadsheet. The

amount sought by plaintiff, $22,575 for 64.5 hours billed, was reduced by $5,670

for 16.2 hours billed for travel time and work on the spreadsheets, resulting in a

fee award of $16,905. We discern no abuse of discretion in the court's order for

attorney's fees.

      We reach a different conclusion with regard to the amount ordered in

interest. Because defendant vacated the premises on November 30, 2020, the

court ordered "no interest, no rent, no common area maintenance or any other

charges, including any accrued interest thereon" would be awarded after that

3
  Because the township billed an estimated sewer bill, which it then adjusted
with the actual usage, the amount due for 2020 usage was reflected in the
accounting as the estimated bill of $2,066.94 minus the actual bill of $1,3 22.30
for a credit of $744.64. We note the May 19, 2022 invoice prepared by plaintiff
incorrectly reflected the actual bill is $1,332.30 but nevertheless correctly
calculated the credit as $744.64.
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date. Counsel's certification explaining the proposed judgment did not address

this reduction, and the spreadsheets reflected charges of $478.19 in January

2021 for interest accrued in December 2020, $5,639.30 for interest accrued in

2021, and $2,458.42 for interest accrued from January 1 through June 17, 2022.

However, it appears that the 2022 interest was entered in the incorrect column

on the summary spreadsheet and therefore was not included in the total amount

of interest calculated as due.

      Because the court disallowed any interest accruing after November 30,

2020, its subsequent order including $6,117.49 in interest charged after that date

was not supported by the record. Accordingly, we reverse that portion of the

court's order and remand for entry of an amended order reducing the judgment

amount from $34,934.09 to $28,816.60.

      Affirmed in part, reversed and remanded in part.         We do not retain

jurisdiction.

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