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Sisters of Providence in Washington v. A.A. Pain Clinic12/19/2003
reasonable.
Appeal Issue 5 Was the award of attorney's fees to both Chandler and Borrello under the antitrust act erroneous because only Chandler prevailed on an antitrust theory?
The Alaska antitrust statute, AS 45.50.576(a)(1), establishes that prevailing parties are entitled to full, reasonable attorney's fees. Alaska Rule of Civil Procedure 82(b)(1) only allows for partial attorney's fee recovery.
Because some of his prevailing claims were under the antitrust statute, Chandler asked for full reasonable attorney's fees. Because he did not prevail on any antitrust claim and only recovered on common law claims, Borrello sought a partial award under Civil Rule 82.
Appellants' sole contention is that the superior court erred in awarding Borrello attorney's fees under the Alaska Antitrust Act when he did not prevail on any of his antitrust claims.
We agree that the superior court abused its discretion in awarding Borrello full reasonable attorney's fees. Because Borrello only prevailed on common law claims, he was not entitled to recovery under the full reasonable fees standard of AS 45.50.576(a)(1). Rather, under Rule 82, he was only entitled to an award of partial fees. Further, since he only prevailed on common law claims against the Group, his Rule 82 award should only run against the Group, and not Providence. The superior court exceeded its "bounds of broad discretion" in awarding Borrello fees that could only be justified by a claim on which he did not prevail, and against a defendant against whom he did not prevail.
Cross-Appeal Issue 1Did the court err in granting j.n.o.v. in favor of APMC and Providence on Chandler's claim of intentional interference with contractual relations?
Chandler alleged that Providence, the Group, and APMC interfered with Chandler's contract with S.H. when they canceled her procedure so as to move it off-site. In part because those acts required him to obtain a temporary restraining order to perform the procedure as scheduled, Chandler asked for damages " n an amount in excess of $50,000.00, to be proven at trial."
At trial, the only evidence regarding damages on this issue came from Chandler's and Borrello's own testimony describing discussions between themselves and S.H.'s family about how to proceed in light of the cancellation, as well as their subsequent attempts to get the restraining order:
e called our attorney, which was Stan Lewis, and I met with Stan and told him the situation. We went to his office in the afternoon, after we had met with [the patient's husband]. And we were up the entire night preparing the documents. He pulled in the whole staff, and the documents were prepared for the next morning in court.
The jury found Providence, the Group, and APMC liable to Chandler for interfering with his contract with patient S.H., awarding damages of $146,240 against APMC, and $292,480 against Providence. Subsequently, the defendants moved for j.n.o.v., arguing that Chandler had not presented any evidence of damages arising from contractual interference. The superior court agreed that there was insufficient evidence to justify that claim.
Chandler argues that the record reflects sufficient injury since he had to both hire a lawyer and work all night to prepare paperwork to file the eventually successful restraining order. Alternatively, Chandler asks for nominal damages in order to negate APMC's prevailing-party status and avoid the consequential attorney's fees award. Chandler cites Grant v. Stoyer for the proposition that the court cannot award zero damages when it is "beyond legitimate controversy" that there was a compensab
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