Government
Jul. 31, 2002
Litigation Costs Of Foster Care Worry Official
LOS ANGELES - Six weeks after Supervisor Gloria Molina chastised county counsel for spending too much on outside defense attorneys, the Board of Supervisors is poised to approve a $1 million foster-care death settlement, plus $325,000 in legal bills from its contract tort counsel.
Tuesday's settlement involves the June 1997 death by "undetermined causes," according to the coroner, of Jonathan Reid, 9, and injuries sustained by his then-4-year-old brother, Debvin Mitchell. Both children were in foster care.
And what happened to her sons led Debra Reid, their mother, to file the first of two lawsuits against the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services and other defendants a year after Jonathan's death.
Wendy Wiegman, Molina's children's deputy, said Monday that her boss is very concerned about the county's litigation management.
"In this case in particular, the lack of a meaningful, departmentwide corrective-action process still plagues DCFS. We do not learn from our mistakes," Wiegman said.
Reid charged that the county's legal tactics were heavy-handed.
"I was put on trial for the death of Jonathan," she said.
For the last five years, Reid's case has been moving through the legal system. Other defendants named in her case have settled for a total of $300,000. The county's lawyers, however, were the last defendants to come to terms with Reid's attorneys, Carl E. Douglas of the Law Offices of Carl E. Douglas and Drew R. Antablin of Cheong, Denove, Rowell, Antablin & Bennett. Reid v. County of Los Angeles, BC192211 (L.A. Superior Court) and Mitchell v. County of Los Angeles, BC213758 (L.A. Superior Court, cases consolidated).
Attorneys with Monroy, Averbuck & Gysler represented the county. Included in Tuesday's proposed $l million settlement is an additional $325,000 to be paid to the private firm, one of several that routinely defend the county in cases involving children who died or were injured while their care was under the supervision of the child-protective system.
In an unusual statement, county counsel defended the amount of outside legal fees in the Reid case in documents sent to the Board of Supervisors late last week.
"Substantial attorneys' fees and cost[s] have been incurred due to plaintiffs' excessive settlement demands which resulted in this proposed settlement being accepted by plaintiffs merely days before the trial was scheduled to commence," Kevin C. Brazile, assistant county counsel, stated.
"Consequently, the case was fully prepared for trial, which required the retention of expert witnesses and extensive depositions. This substantially increased the attorneys' fees and costs," Brazile said.
He said information about annual costs paid to contract law firms was not available.
Wiegman said her boss "has many concerns" about law firm fees, and the Reid case is only the latest.
Last month, when a Department of Children and Family Services' whistle-blower settlement of $450,000 came before the Board of Supervisors with a bill for $170,000 from county contract attorneys, Molina said the situation was "out of control."
"It's unbelievable that lawyers can suck us dry like this," she said.
As an illustration, the supervisor cited an otherwise unidentified case involving a baby boy born without an anal opening in a county hospital. When his teen-age mother returned to the facility three days later with her critically ill baby, he died. The mother subsequently sued, and the county hired outside attorneys to defend its interests.
"The defense premise was that this 16-year-old must have brought in another baby, 'couldn't have been our baby,' and they were following that case," Molina said. "Depositions, interrogatories [of] the 16-year-old girl, asking where she got this baby from. Different baby, supposedly. Doesn't even make sense, does it?"
Molina called for a common-sense approach and said that, in some situations, reasonable claims ought to be settled early on.
"You know what? We made a mistake here. We got to figure out how not to pay a huge claim, but this baby's dead, not at the hands of the 16-year-old. The baby's dead because we didn't check what we were supposed to by law," she said.
The supervisor sponsored a successful board motion to implement oversight controls on outside legal costs. The Molina plan calls for mandatory reports when costs reach certain benchmarks, and these periodic expense reports will be reviewed by county officials.
Meanwhile, Reid, whose son's death initially was ruled a homicide because of a drug overdose, said she plans to tell county supervisors what she thinks at Tuesday's board meeting.
"I have asked Congresswoman Maxine Waters, D-Los Angeles, to initiate a federal attorney general's investigation," Reid said. "We have been cheated of true justice."
Cheryl Romo
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