PHIL SIMON V HENRY JAMES TELMAN
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STATE OF MICHIGAN
COURT OF APPEALS
PHIL SIMON and PHIL SIMON ENTERPRISES,
INC,
UNPUBLISHED
April 1, 2004
Plaintiff-Appellant,
V
Nos. 241834, 243525
Kent Circuit Court
LC No. 01-007371-NM
HENRY JAMES TELMAN,
Defendant-Appellee.
Before: Meter, P.J., Borrello and Wilder, JJ.
WILDER, J. (concurring).
I join in the majority opinion in docket no. 241834, and concur in the result in docket no.
243525. I write separately in docket no. 243525 to state my disagreement with the reasoning
employed by the majority in remanding to the trial court for an evidentiary hearing on the
reasonableness of the attorney fees requested. As noted in Kernan v Homestead Development,
252 Mich App 689, 691 (2002), an evidentiary hearing is not required to determine the
reasonableness of a request for attorney fees where the record is sufficient to review the issue.
We review a trial court’s determination to deny an evidentiary hearing on the basis that the
record was sufficient for an abuse of discretion. Id.
Nevertheless, I concur in the remand for an evidentiary hearing because it is not readily
apparent from the record that the trial court in fact had a sufficient record from which to consider
the reasonableness of the request. The trial court’s statement that it was “very familiar with this
file, very familiar with the work that goes into preparing a file” cannot satisfy the “sufficient
record” threshold because it provides an inadequate statement of factors relied upon by the trial
court from which this Court can conduct its review. See, e.g., Wood v DAIIE, 413 Mich 573,
588; 321 NW2d 653 (1982). Thus, I agree based on the limited record in this case that the trial
court abused its discretion in denying the request for evidentiary hearing.
/s/ Kurtis T. Wilder
-1-
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