Talking Turkey: Impact Fund Files Amicus Brief To Protect Catalyst Fees For Plaintiffs
Meredith Dixon, Impact Fund Law Fellow
Last week, the Impact Fund and fifteen fellow public interest legal organizations filed an amicus brief in the California Court of Appeals defending plaintiffs’ right to catalyst fees in public interest lawsuits.
“Catalyst fees” are one type of attorneys’ fees designed to compensate attorney time spent on public interest lawsuits that catalyze a change in the defendant’s behavior. Not only do catalyst fees incentivize private enforcement, but they also address a specific and serious concern. Plaintiffs face the risk that defendants will vigorously litigate for months or years and then—on the eve of or during trial—fix the very problem challenged in the litigation, moot the case, and escape compensating plaintiffs for the time and effort required to call attention to the problem.
In Direct Action Everywhere v. Diestel Turkey Ranch, the plaintiff encountered just this situation after it filed a false advertising lawsuit alleging that Diestel was deceiving customers about the condition in which it kept animals on its properties. Several days into the trial, Diestel voluntarily removed the allegedly false statements from its website as part of a “website refresh.”
Our brief describes California’s decades-long recognition of the role of attorneys’ fees in encouraging private enforcement of the state’s civil rights laws.
The trial court denied Direct Action’s motion for catalyst fees for multiple reasons, two of which stood out to the Impact Fund and its allies. First, the court scorned the plaintiff’s reason for bringing the lawsuit and, second, it criticized the plaintiff’s activities outside the courtroom. Ultimately, the court held that plaintiffs do not deserve fees when they file litigation consistent with their organizational goals or fail to behave in a manner “above reproach” before and during the litigation.
Our brief describes California’s decades-long recognition of the role of attorneys’ fees in encouraging private enforcement of the state’s civil rights laws. The State Legislature and Supreme Court have defined the factors that determine whether a plaintiff is entitled to attorneys’ fees, and the trial court’s order bore little resemblance to the established analysis. If the trial court’s reasoning is allowed to stand, courts could withhold fees simply because an organizational plaintiff files mission-aligned litigation or acts in a manner that displeases them, from issuing press releases to engaging in protests or policy advocacy, regardless of whether those acts violate any law or have any effect on the litigation. This is not what the legislature or supreme court intended.
California courts have long recognized that catalyst fees are key to encouraging public interest litigation, and the Impact Fund and amici continue to defend the proper catalyst fee analysis.
We are grateful to be joined by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California; American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California; Centro Legal de la Raza; Disability Rights Advocates; Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund; Equal Justice Society; Law Foundation of Silicon Valley; Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area; Legal Aid Association of California; Legal Aid at Work; Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County; Public Counsel; Public Interest Law Project; Western Center on Law and Poverty; and Worksafe.