A judge has ordered the DuPont Clinic to pay attorney’s fees to the city of Beverly Hills after a previous motion was decided in the city’s favor. The amount awarded to the city, $69,250, was significantly less than the requested amount of $416,942.
Both sides expressed satisfaction with the outcome.
“DuPont was heartened by the court’s ruling on the city’s motion for attorney’s fees,” said Jessica Corpuz, an attorney representing DuPont. “DuPont continues to believe that rationality and common sense will ultimately prevail in this case.”
Keith Sterling, Beverly Hills’ deputy city manager, said the city is happy to receive the partial amount.
“We are pleased to be reimbursed for a portion of our costs,” he said.
The legal battle between DuPont and Beverly Hills began in 2023. The clinic, which provides reproductive health care services including abortion up to 32 weeks and six days, was slated to open a location in the city in October 2023.
DuPont was swiftly met with opposition, however, when the Los Angeles chapter of an anti-abortion group began protesting at the clinic’s future location on Wilshire Boulevard.
Protesters soon showed up at Beverly Hills City Council meetings, urging officials to deny permits to DuPont.
The clinic received a letter in June 2023 from landlord Douglas Emmett stating that its lease was being canceled due to DuPont’s failure to disclose that “the primary focus of tenant’s practice would be providing abortions for abnormal and high-risk pregnancies.”
DuPont filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court against the city of Beverly Hills and various city officials in October 2023, and the city followed with an “anti-SLAPP motion” in February 2024, seeking to strike numerous allegations in DuPont’s complaint.
That anti-SLAPP motion was granted in December 2024, and this February, the city put forth the request for attorney’s fees, arguing that they are entitled to them as the prevailing party in the anti-SLAPP case.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael Shultz, who oversaw the request for attorney’s fees, submitted his final decision on June 20. In it, he found that the work performed and reported by the city, which the city claimed was done by three partners and two attorneys at the law firm Tucker Ellis, LLP, was “excessive, inefficient, and duplicative.”
Shultz wrote that “name partners were doing work that could have been done by lower-billing attorneys, and that all the attorneys were doing work that could have been done by paralegals.”
Shultz also found that the hours spent on tasks performed by the attorneys were “unreasonable,” and that some of the hourly rates billed by both partners and attorneys, which ranged from $460 to $825, were unreasonable and unsupported based on standard rates in the region.
DuPont is still involved in litigation with the city. Following the decision granting the city’s anti-SLAPP motion, the clinic filed an appeal, which is still pending.
“DuPont maintains that the court’s ruling on the anti-SLAPP was wrongly decided and is currently seeking a reversal of that ruling on appeal,” said Corpuz.
In May, the clinic filed a second lawsuit against the city alleging, in part, that the city played a role in the cancellation of DuPont’s lease.
According to that complaint, the city denied the clinic’s building permits and conducted a “hostile pressure campaign … under the guise of public safety leading to the termination of DuPont’s Lease.”
