A California restaurant group won a $60,391 jury award after serving Masters meals for John Hagestad's family without ever agreeing on a total price. The California Court of Appeal later left the group with only $1,950 in attorney fees, far less than it had asked for.
The dispute began in March 2022, when Hagestad and his wife dined at a high-end restaurant run by Hanna Carroll Restaurant Group LLC in Orange County and then arranged food service for 20 to 30 family members and friends headed to Augusta, Georgia. Before the Masters, Dave Hanna sent a customized seven-day breakfast and dinner menu that the family reviewed and approved, and the restaurant later staffed private meals and a full bar for an average of 25 guests per sitting over five days.
When the festivities ended, Hagestad received an invoice for $74,960, which reflected a courtesy $5,000 discount. Hanna then revoked that discount and added a $5,000 fee for the time spent trying to collect payment, pushing the bill to $84,960. Hagestad refused to pay, and Hanna Carroll Restaurant Group LLC filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit.
At trial, the restaurant argued that the parties had reached an enforceable agreement even without a formal written contract or a stated total price. The jury agreed on liability but did not accept the full invoice amount. It awarded $60,391, a figure that appears to reflect the jury's view of the reasonable value of the food and service actually provided rather than the final amount Hanna billed.
That was the fight inside the case. Hagestad had not simply ignored the bill; during pretrial discovery, the restaurant asked him to admit that he had entered a catering contract covering all seven days of the Masters, and he responded with a blanket denial instead of carving out what he accepted and what he disputed. His position was that he would have found other catering if he had known the price in advance.
The appellate ruling addressed something narrower but just as costly. The California Court of Appeal, Fourth Appellate District, Division Three, affirmed a lower court order that granted only $1,950 of the $81,875 in attorney fees Hanna Carroll Restaurant Group LLC sought. It also rejected $25,741.20 in court reporter fees entirely. The result leaves the restaurant with a jury win on the bill itself, but only a fraction of the side costs it tried to recover.
What remains unresolved is the simplest part of the fight: what price, if any, the parties thought they had agreed to when the meals were ordered for Masters week. The record shows a catered luxury arrangement, a jury award, and a sharply reduced fee recovery — but no total cost ever put in writing before the food was served.
