Before Chief Justice Pickering, and Justices Hardesty and Saitta. Opinion by Chief Justice Pickering.
In this appeal from a district court order adjudicating a law firm’s charging lien for attorneys’ fees against its former client under pre-2013 NRS 18.015, the Court considered whether the lien should have been adjudicated when the law firm did not serve the statutory notices required to perfect its lien until eight months after the case was over and property distributed. The Court held that to assert a charging lien against the client’s claim or recovery under NRS 18.015, four requirements must be met. First, the attorney must have presented a claim for affirmative relief, generally recovery of money or property, on behalf of the client. Second, the attorney must perfect the lien by serving a notice in writing by certified mail, return receipt requested, to the client and upon the opposing party whom the client has a cause of action and stating the attorney’s interest in the cause of action. Third, the statute sets a timing requirement that once perfected the lien attaches to a verdict, judgment or decree entered and to any money or property which is recovered on account of the suit or other action, from the time of service of the notices required by this section. Fourth, the attorney must timely file and properly serve a motion to adjudicate the lien. Here, because LoBello failed to perfect its lien until eight months after a stipulated divorce decree was entered and the property was distributed – well after the time a lien could have attached to any of the property governed by that settlement – and because the settlement of a later custody dispute did not modify the property distribution in the divorce decree or otherwise bring that property back into dispute, there was no property to which LoBello’ s lien could attach. Since there were no “tangible fruits” upon which the lien could attach at the time the lien was served, the district court should not have adjudicated the lien under NRS 18.015(4). Reversed. (Lisa M. Wiltshire Alstead, Associate in the Reno office of McDonald Carano Wilson).
