Perspectives: Attorney-fee appeals attract attention.

Byline: Marshall H. Tanick

"The matter of fees is important, [and] properly attended to, fuller justice is done to both lawyer and client."

Abraham Lincoln, "Notes for a Law Lecture" (July 1, 1850)

There is nothing that attracts the attention of attorneys more than lawsuits involving attorney fees.Six of them were decided this summer, one by the Supreme Court, a trio by the Minnesota Court of Appeals, and two by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Two of them, decided within a 48-hour span, involved the imposition of sanctions by lower courts. Both were overturned on appeal in the Minnesota Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals, respectively, while the claimants in the four other cases experienced mixed results.

The advice by Abraham Lincoln to lawyers some eight score and 13 years ago provides a framework for reviewing this half dozen fee cases.

Family feuds

A trial court does not have the inherent authority to make a fee award on conduct that occurs outside the context of litigation, according to the ruling of the Supreme Court inBuckner v. Robichaud, 992 N.W.2d 686 (Minn. July 5, 2023). The case arose from a post-marriage-dissolution dispute that was subject to a marital mediated settlement agreement concerning disposition of a college savings account for their daughter, then a minor, when she turned 21. After years of skirmishing, which included significant delays, and some obstructive conduct by the girl's father. The fund was ultimately transferred to her.

But the court imposed a sanction of attorney's fees against the father for his post-litigation behavior under its "inherent authority" to award fees, although the applicable statute, Minn. Stat. 518.14, subd. 1, only allowed fees in connection with the litigation, rather than the behavior concerning the trust that occurred after the case was concluded.

The Court of Appeals upheld that determination, but the Supreme Court did not. The latter reasoned, in a decision written by Chief Justice Lorie Gildea, that a fee award was not "within the scope of the district court's inherent authority."

Reviewing case law regarding attorney fees awards, the chief justice noted the "limited boundaries of a district court's inherent authority" to award attorney's fees, which was surpassed in this case because the award of attorney's fees was "not necessary to the performance of a judicial function." She concluded that the trial court "exceeded the scope of its inherent authority in awarding...