In Yates v. Law Offices of Samuel Shore (1991) 229 Cal.App.3d 583, the attorney's fee agreement entitled him to a share of his clients' recovery in a medical malpractice action, and otherwise provided that his fee did not include services he might render in an appeal. (Yates, at pp. 585-586.) After the attorney secured a monetary judgment in his clients' favor, he engaged a second attorney at an hourly rate to represent his clients on appeal. (Id. at pp. 586-587.) When the attorney asserted that the second attorney's fee was exempt from the limits in section 6146, his clients commenced an action against him. (Yates, at p. 587.) The trial court concluded that section 6146 prohibited charging such a fee in addition to the maximum contingent fee allowed under the statute. (Yates, at p. 591.) In affirming, the appellate court stated: "The primary rationale of the trial court's holding was that section 6146 fixes the maximum allowable contingent fee for a medical malpractice action as a whole, including an appeal after judgment, and the limitation may not be avoided by charging separate fees for segments of the case or by charging both contingent and hourly fees. This construction is strongly supported by the statute's language ... . It thus plainly appears that the attorney was limited to the section 6146 contingent fee for the entire case. He could not enhance that fee by truncating his contingent representation at the appellate threshold and charging additional, ostensibly noncontingent amounts for the appeal." (Yates, supra, 229 Cal.App.3d at p. 591.)