Segregation of Attorney’s Fees Required
June 14, 2013The trial court awarded the appellees over $360,000 in attorney’s fees in a commercial dispute concerning the sale of a business under an asset purchase agreement. On appeal, the Court addressed the requirement that, when a party seeks attorney’s fees in a case involving several claims, some of which permit the recover of fees and some of which don’t, “the party must segregate and exclude the fees for services related to the claims for which fees are not recoverable.” In this case, the appellees argued that they could not segregate fees because their tort claims (which don’t provide for attorney’s fees) arose from the same transactions and facts as their contract claims (which do). The Court disagreed and found that “[b]ecause there is not a de minimis exception to the requirement to segregate recoverable attorney’s fees from non-recoverable and there was evidence of unsegregated non-recoverable attorney’s fees included in the amount awarded by the trial court, a new trial on attorney’s fees is required.”
