Filed 4/26/17 Casas v. City of Baldwin Park CA2/5
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS
California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on
opinions not certified for publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule
8.1115(b). This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for
purposes of rule 8.1115.
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
SECOND APPELLATE DISTRICT
DIVISION FIVE
JULIAN CASAS,
Plaintiff and Appellant,
v.
CITY OF BALDWIN PARK, et al.,
Defendants and Respondents.
B275535
(Los Angeles County
Super. Ct. No. BS145297)
APPEAL from an order of the Superior Court of Los
Angeles County, James C. Chalfant, Judge. Affirmed.
Law Office of Paul Cook and Paul Cook for Plaintiff and
Appellant.
Albright, Yee & Schmit, Clifton W. Albright and Jamie E.
Wright, for Defendants and Respondents.
2
This appeal is an outgrowth of the same proceedings that
resulted in our recent decision in Casas v. City of Baldwin Park,
et al. (Mar. 28, 2017, B270313) [nonpub. opn.] (Casas I).1
As
noted in that opinion, the trial court awarded Paul Cook, counsel
for plaintiff Julian Casas, nearly $40,000 in attorney fees for
work that led to the issuance of a writ of mandate compelling the
City of Baldwin Park (the City) to produce records pursuant to
the California Public Records Act (CPRA). We now consider
Casas’s claim that the trial court erred in refusing to award
additional attorney fees for work Cook performed in filing
motions and an ex parte application to compel compliance with
the writ the court issued.
I
The parties are familiar with our recitation of the relevant
background facts and procedural history in Casas I, and we
accordingly forego a full recounting here. Suffice it to say the
trial court issued a writ of mandate compelling production of
records in November 2014. Because Casas prevailed in the
proceedings that led to the issuance of the writ, the trial court
awarded Casas $38,500 in attorney fees, calculated at a rate of
$350 an hour for 110 hours. Further litigation then ensued
concerning whether the City had produced all the materials the
court ordered. That litigation included Casas’s motion to compel

1 On our own motion, we take judicial notice of the record on
appeal filed in this court in Casas I and of our unpublished
opinion in that case. (Evid. Code, §§ 451, subd. (a), 452, subd. (d),
459, subd. (a); see People v. Vizcarra (2015) 236 Cal.App.4th 422,
426, fn. 1.)
3
compliance with the writ of mandate, an ex parte application
regarding the same, and a second motion to compel compliance
with the order the trial court entered when deciding the first writ
compliance motion (collectively, the “compliance litigation”).
During the January 2016 hearing at which the trial court
finally resolved the compliance litigation, Cook foreshadowed he
might seek additional attorney fees for work undertaken in
connection with that litigation. The trial court responded, “Let
me tell you something. One thing I regret in this case was I
awarded you too much in hourly rates, and I’m not giving you any
more attorneys fees.”
Undeterred, Cook filed a motion for an additional $62,440
in attorney fees (the Motion) just over three weeks later. The
Motion specifically sought compensation for 178.4 hours of work
at an “hourly rate, as upheld by the court already [of] . . . $350 an
hour.” Cook maintained Casas was a prevailing party, within the
meaning of CPRA’s attorney fees provision, and the Motion
asserted the accrued 178.4 hours were “for two ex partes, two
meet and confers, two writ compliance orders, and one attorneys
fee motion . . . .”2

Attached to the Motion were two exhibits, the first of which
was entitled “Law Office of Paul Cook[’s] Attorney[’s] Billing for
Casas v. The City of Baldwin Park, Time Period From Feb. 2,
2014 to Feb. 11, 2016.” Filed separately from the Motion was a

2 Cook later sought to increase the amount of fees demanded
when he filed his reply to the City’s opposition to the Motion.
The new amount demanded was $66,465, which included fees for
additional hours ostensibly worked in responding to the City’s
opposition to the Motion.
4
document captioned “Paul Cook’s Declaration in Support of
Attorney’s Fees and Other Exhibits; Proof of Service.” The
declaration averred Cook had personal knowledge of “the billing
statement introduced” and “personally recorded the time[ ]
reflected in” the aforementioned Exhibit 1 to the Motion. The
declaration further stated: “I have reasonably expended 175
hours in prosecuting this action. These hours are broken down
more fully in the attached exhibit, which is hereby incorporated
by reference.” So far as we can discern from the record, however,
no exhibit was attached to the declaration.
The City opposed Casas’s Motion. The City argued Casas
was not the prevailing party during the compliance litigation
because he “switch[ed] and modif[ied] the documents he
requested” and the documents he asked for were not within the
scope of the writ the trial court issued.
3
The City also argued
Cook’s billing records had not been authenticated.
The trial court denied the Motion, giving what amount to
three reasons for doing so. First, the court recognized CPRA
requires an award of fees to a prevailing party, but the court
found Casas did not prevail in undertaking the compliance
litigation. The court explained that “[t]he first compliance order
was at least arguably outside the CPRA request’s scope and the
court expressly stated that it was issuing the second order due to
confusion over the scope of its . . . order [on Casas’s ex parte
application] and no additional attorneys’ fees would be awarded.”

3 The City also challenged the Motion’s calculation of 178.4
hours as inflated and excessive. The City highlighted, for
instance, the Motion’s assertion that Cook spent 76.4 hours on
preparing and filing one writ compliance motion.
5
Second, the court found Cook had “once again” failed to present a
declaration authenticating the billing records for 178.4 hours of
work. The court explained the billing records were not attached
to the declaration and the declaration was not “proper
authentication.” Third, the court found that “the $38,500 already
awarded is sufficient to compensate [Casas] for the entirety of his
attorney’s work on this case, including the motions to compel
compliance with the writ.” The court elaborated: “Had the court
awarded a more appropriate hourly rate at the time . . . [Casas]
would have received a significantly lower award. The court
cannot und[o] the previous award, but it may take into account
its excessive nature in evaluating the instant motion. At $200
per hour, [Casas’s] counsel would have received $22,000 for 110
hours of work. Thus, the $38,500 award was excessive by at least
$13,500. This $13,500 is more than adequate compensation for
the work [Casas’s] counsel has performed since the initial award
($200 x 67.5 hours). In fact, 67.5 hours for the two motions,
meetings, and instant motion is excessive given the time spent on
clerical matters, improper briefs, and procedural failures.”
II
The trial court did not err in denying Casas’s motion for
additional attorney fees. Two of the reasons given by the trial
court, both independently sufficient, convince us this is so. First,
the trial court’s ruling that Casas’s billing records had not been
properly authenticated was not an abuse of discretion. Second,
there is no reliable indication in the record before us that Casas
prevailed in the compliance litigation. That is to say, we see no
admissible evidence that demonstrates the litigation led the City
6
to produce additional documents as called for in the writ of
mandate.
A
A trial court’s ruling denying attorney fees is ordinarily
subject to abuse of discretion review, unless the question on
appeal reduces to one of law. (Chavez v. City of Los Angeles
(2010) 47 Cal.4th 970, 989; Pacific Merchant Shipping Assn. v.
Board of Pilot Commissioners (2015) 242 Cal.App.4th 1043, 1054
(Pacific Merchant); Law Offices of Marc Grossman v. Victor
Elementary School Dist. (2015) 238 Cal.App.4th 1010, 1013-1014
[attorney fee awards under CPRA reviewed for abuse of
discretion, but de novo review appropriate where the propriety of
the fee award turns on an issue of statutory construction].) We
review for abuse of discretion a trial court’s ruling that evidence
is inadmissible because it has not been properly authenticated.
(See People v. Goldsmith (2014) 59 Cal.4th 258, 266-267 [trial
court’s ruling on the admissibility of evidence reviewed for abuse
of discretion].)
B
Government Code section 6259, subdivision (a) permits a
person requesting public records to file a petition to compel
disclosure of the records if they are being improperly withheld.
Subdivision (d) of the statute, an attorney fees provision, provides
in relevant part: “The court shall award court costs and
reasonable attorney fees to the plaintiff should the plaintiff
prevail in litigation filed pursuant to this section.” (Gov. Code, §
6259, subd. (d).) The standard test for determining whether a
plaintiff has prevailed within the meaning of CPRA is whether
7
“‘he or she files an action which results in defendant releasing a
copy of a previously withheld document.’” (Pacific Merchant,
supra, 242 Cal.App.4th at p. 1053, citing Belth v. Garamendi
(1991) 232 Cal.App.3d 896, 898.) In resolving this appeal, we
assume for argument’s sake that the compliance litigation
qualifies as “litigation filed pursuant to” Government Code
section 6259.
C
The trial court was well within its discretion to conclude
Cook’s declaration did not properly authenticate the ostensible
records of hours worked on the compliance litigation. The second
paragraph of Cook’s declaration unmistakably refers to Exhibit 1
to the Motion, i.e., the spreadsheet of apparent time entries
entitled “Law Office of Paul Cook’s Attorney’s Billing for Casas v.
The City of Baldwin Park, / Time Period From Feb. 2, 2014 to
Feb. 11, 2016.” But all this paragraph says about the
spreadsheet is that Cook “personally recorded the time[ ]
reflected in” that document. By contrast, it is paragraph 11 of
the declaration in which Cook states he “reasonably expended
175 hours in prosecuting this action” and avers “[t]hese hours are
broken down more fully in the attached exhibit, which is hereby
incorporated by reference.” The problem, of course, is that there
is no attached exhibit and paragraph 11 by its own terms makes
no reference to Exhibit 1 to the Motion. That means the Motion
was not supported by any properly authenticated evidence of the
work Cook claimed to have performed in connection with the
8
compliance litigation.4
(Evid. Code, §§ 1400, 1401.) And without
such evidence, the Motion necessarily failed.
Even if there were admissible evidence of the amount of
time Cook expended on the compliance litigation, the record
before us does not demonstrate Casas was the prevailing party in
that litigation.
So far as the record reveals, neither Casas’s first writ
compliance motion nor his later ex parte application prompted
the production of any additional documents or a finding by the
trial court that the City had failed to comply with the previously
issued writ of mandate. During the first writ compliance
hearing, the City maintained it had produced all responsive
documents and the court ordered the City to produce, or to
identify for Casas’s attorney where in the prior productions the
documents were included, three categories of documents.
Similarly, as to Casas’s ex parte application, the trial court did
not find the City had failed to comply with the writ of mandate
but merely notified the City that it would be sanctioned if it were
later determined there had been non-compliance. Because Casas
never submitted a declaration or other admissible evidence in the

4 Even the conclusory statement that Cook spent “175 hours
in prosecuting this action” is insufficient to demonstrate any
entitlement to additional attorney fees. (Compare Martino v.
Denevi (1986) 182 Cal.App.3d 553, 559 [“Testimony of an
attorney as to the number of hours worked on a particular case is
sufficient evidence to support an award of attorney fees, even in
the absence of detailed time records”].) Casas had already been
awarded $38,500 in attorney fees, and a statement concerning
the total hours spent prosecuting “this action” does not identify
hours related only to the compliance litigation.
9
trial court to describe the materials the City had and had not
produced, we have no reliable means to determine whether
additional documents were in fact produced. If anything, Casas’s
opening brief appears to concede the opposite, stating (without
citation to the record) in a “chronology of events” table that “[n]o
new records [we]re released” as a result of the trial court’s first
writ compliance order.
Casas does assert, however, that the City released “an
incomplete set of towing records” sometime after the trial court
issued its order on his second compliance motion. He cites no
evidence in the record to support this assertion other than an
observation by the trial court, during the hearing on the Motion
at issue in this appeal, that he “did get more documents.” The
basis for that observation is unclear, but what is clear from the
record is that the court tempered this observation by
subsequently stating: “[T]he compliance, at best, issues are
murky. Why, because it was a moving target for the City as to
what you wanted, and so when I ordered the City to produce
something, either in the first compliance hearing or the second
compliance hearing, it’s not at all clear that those items were
actually requested in the initial CPRA request. [¶] The fact that
I ordered it to be produced does not mean it was asked for
initially. And you would not be entitled to attorneys fees unless
it was part of the initial request and the subject of the writ.”
Even if we assume the City did produce some additional
materials after the hearing on Casas’s second compliance motion,
the record is insufficient to demonstrate the production was
within the scope of the previously issued writ such that Casas
could be considered a prevailing party and entitled to additional
10
attorney fees. We accordingly have no basis to overturn the trial
court’s finding that Casas was not a prevailing party.
For either of the two independent reasons we have given,
we hold the trial court correctly denied Casas’s Motion.
DISPOSITION
The trial court’s order is affirmed. Defendants are to
recover their costs on appeal.
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS
BAKER, J.
We concur:
KRIEGLER, Acting P.J.
KUMAR, J.


Judge of the Los Angeles Superior Court, assigned by the
Chief Justice pursuant to article VI, section 6 of the California
Constitution.