I imagine that sometimes the California Court of Appeal might want to say: "This case is complicated but really doesn't involve that much money at all. Can't the taxpayers just pay you to go away?"
As in this one.
It involves the interpretation of a dozen complicated commercial lease agreements, and involves claims and counterclaims by all the parties. The trial court found against everyone, and then everyone appeals.
Justice Elia holds that the trial court was largely correct, but also concludes that the plaintiffs were correct on their argument that the landlord shouldn't have been charging them for a total of $32,153.92 in LLC fees that the landlord paid the Franchise Tax Board between 2001 and 2006. So plaintiffs get their $32,000 or so. In return for which everyone pays their lawyers much, much more than this, and the judiciary spents a healthy fraction of this amount on both the trial and appellate resolutions.
But at least we get a published opinion out of it that tells us how to read the particular leases at issue in this case. Which is nice.
