On May 22, Tucker Ellis obtained an appellate win for Concord Property Management, Inc., a commercial landlord in the Los Angeles area. The initial landlord-tenant dispute arose when the commercial lessee failed to pay rent and continued to possess the premises. After the trial court denied prevailing attorney’s fees to the tenant, the tenant appealed the fees order. Concord retained Tucker Ellis for the appeal. Lessee’s counsel, a tenants’ rights advocate, used the appeal as a vehicle to attempt to make new case law expanding tenant entitlement to attorneys’ fees in landlord-tenant disputes.

Zi Lin led the Tucker Ellis appellate team of Anna-Sophie Tirre and Chad Eggspuehler on the briefing, and Zi argued the appeal in California’s Second Appellate District, Los Angeles County. Critical to the fees determination was whether the gravamen of the dispute (typically determined by examining the allegations of the complaint and arguments at trial, if trial is held) sounded in contract (breach of lease) or tort (unlawful detainer). Under the fee-shifting provision, tort-based actions that had been voluntarily dismissed were subject to fee-shifting, but contract-based actions were not. A prior appellate decision had found fees justified where an unlawful detainer action had been voluntarily dismissed, but under California law, unlawful detainer actions can sound in either contract or tort, and the fee-shifting analysis considers the gravamen of the overall dispute, not individual claims.

Because Concord’s pre-suit quit notice noted breaches of the lease agreement and the operative complaint asserted a contract claim and sought contract damages consistent with the holdover terms of the lease, the Court of Appeals agreed that Concord’s case primarily sounded in contract—foreclosing the fees request. The Court of Appeal rejected Lessee’s novel and unsupported argument that the gravamen of an action should be determined by looking at pre-trial filings, such as a motion for summary judgment. Tucker Ellis’s appellate briefing also highlighted Lessee’s failure to seek apportionment of fees in the trial court, a strategic choice that precluded partial relief. The unpublished decision was issued in Concord Prop. Mgmt., Inc. v. Lin, No. B331933 (Cal. App. May 22, 2025).