The award of reasonable attorney fees in accordance with subsection A must be made to mitigate the burden of litigation expenses to establish a fair demand or a just defense. It need not be the same as or related to the attorney's fees actually paid or contracted, but the compensation cannot exceed the amount paid or agreed upon. The court will award reasonable attorney fees in any contested action based on clear and convincing evidence that the lawsuit or defense constitutes harassment, is baseless, and is not presented in good faith. In making the award, the court may take into account any evidence it deems appropriate and will receive it during a trial on the merits of the case, or separately, in relation to the amount of fees it deems most convenient for the litigant parties.
The court, and not a jury, will award reasonable attorney fees under this section. Arizona School of Real Estate and Business If you talk to someone who has been a party to a lawsuit, they will almost certainly tell you how expensive it was. Unless an attorney is hired on a “contingency fee” basis, which is rarely an option in business-related cases, the client must pay their attorney to prosecute or defend their case, depending on how much time their lawyer spends. And although in recent years courts have established rules to try to expedite litigation, the reality remains that it takes a lot of time and, therefore, a lot of money to take a case from its inception to trial. Therefore, anyone considering filing a lawsuit or, in fact, anyone trying to decide whether to defend, instead of quickly resolving, a lawsuit filed against them, must consider in their decision whether or not there is a possibility of obtaining a judgment ordering that the other party reimburse the attorney fees incurred in litigating the case.
A separate basis on which parties can recover attorneys' fees in a contract dispute is if the contract in question contains a provision stating that, under any circumstances specified in the contract, one of the parties has the right to have attorneys' fees awarded to them. The advantage for a party seeking to recover attorney's fees based on a contractual provision, rather than based on the law, is that the parties, in their contract, can define in any way they choose who is the “prevailing party” entitled to such recovery and whether the right to recover reimbursement of the attorneys' fees incurred is absolute, instead of being left to the discretion of the judge. Before initiating litigation related to a contract lawsuit, a potential litigant should carefully review the “attorney's fees” provision in their contract to fully understand what their rights are to recover their attorneys' fees, in addition to the rights granted to them by law. In any contested action arising from a contract, express or implied, the court may award the winning party reasonable attorney's fees. While the law does not say what fees should be considered in determining who is the winning party, the court considered that, when reading this law in accordance with Rule 68 of Civil Procedure relating to offers of judgment, the calculation should be made on the basis of the fees and costs incurred before the offer.
The so-called “American rule”, which applies to non-contract cases in Arizona, states that each litigant is responsible for paying their own attorneys' fees, no matter how the case develops. This section shall in no way be interpreted as altering, prohibiting, or restricting current or future contracts or statutes that can provide for attorneys' fees. However, since the law states that the comparison that must be made is with the sentence finally obtained once the attorneys' fees awarded by the trial court under the ARS sec.
