Isrin v. Superior Court

In Isrin v. Superior Court (1965) 63 Cal.2d 153, the court addressed the issue of whether an indigent plaintiff could be denied the right to proceed in forma pauperis on the sole ground that her attorney, who was presumably solvent, was acting under a contingent fee contract. ( Id. at p. 155.) In overruling a 1933 appellate court decision, the Isrin court expressly rejected the notion that a contingent fee contract or any assignment or lien created thereby gives the attorney the beneficial rights of a real party in interest or a present pecuniary interest in the subject matter of the action. ( Id. at p. 161.) Accordingly, the court held that the right to proceed in forma pauperis in appropriate cases could not be denied on the ground that counsel for the indigent litigant was employed under a contingent fee contract. ( Id. at p. 165.) In analyzing the nature of the attorney's interest in litigation conducted under a contingent fee contract, the Isrin court discussed the issue of attorney's liens in pertinent part as follows: "In this state attorney's liens are provided by legislation in certain limited instances , and may be created by express provision of the retainer contract between the attorney and his client . Beyond this point, however, the law of attorney's liens in California today is much less clear. On the one hand, it has been said in a line of decisions stretching from Ex parte Kyle , supra, 1 Cal. 331, to Jones v. Martin (1953) 41 Cal.2d 23, 27, 256 P.2d 905 . . ., that our courts do not recognize the common-law charging lien of an attorney for his fee. On the other hand, the Kyle rule has been increasingly disregarded in practice. . . . A line of decisions, while not speaking in terms of a 'lien,' holds that the mere execution of a contingent fee contract transfers ipso facto to the attorney a 'vested equitable interest' in his proportionate share of the proceeds. As Professor Radin has remarked (28 Cal.L.Rev. at p. 597, fn. 26), 'How these cases are to be reconciled to the doctrine that there is no lien for the attorney in California is not quite clear.' An answer may lie in the fact that typically these were suits to establish an interest in real property, and the plaintiff had agreed by contract to convey to his attorney, as compensation for the latter's services in conducting the litigation, a certain percentage of whatever land might be recovered. Analogizing to the settled rule of equity in suits on a contract for the sale of land, the courts held that upon execution of the contingent fee contract the attorney, like a vendee, immediately acquired equitable title to his share of the land and that such interest would be protected, if necessary, by the imposition of a constructive trust. While the analogy is not free from doubt, the holdings of these early land cases have been extended in more recent times to personal injury actions, with little apparent concern for niceties of definition. In these circumstances it is problematical whether much vitality remains in the Kyle rule." (63 Cal.2d at pp. 157-158, ) The Isrin court then concluded as to the lien issue: "For our present purposes, however, we need not attempt resolution of such conflicts in the law of attorney's liens. It will be enough to observe that in whatever terms one characterizes an attorney's lien under a contingent fee contract, it is no more than a security interest in the proceeds of the litigation." ( Isrin v. Superior Court, supra, 63 Cal.2d at p. 158, )