May 29, 2014 – Daily Brief

Folks will remember that in recent months the City of Santa Clarita settled the "citizen" lawsuit which sought to force Santa Clarita's City Council elections to be divided into 5 districts, under a law passed by the California Legislature called the California Voting Rights Act. The settlement of the case was, in essence, a change in future City Council election dates and the payment to the lawyers who brought the lawsuit attorneys fees of several hundred thousand dollars. No Council Districts were created by the settlement. The LA Daily News just put up a news story saying that the Second District Court of Appeal invalidated Palmdale's most recent at-large City Council election. http://www.dailynews.com/general-news/2014 That election was held shortly after a Superior Court trial judge in Downtown Los Angeles, Judge Mark Mooney, ruled that Palmdale was, in fact, violating the California Civil Rights Act by its City Council refusing to divide itself into 4 Councilmanic Districts. See: http://www.dailynews.com/general-news/2014 My Santa Clarita friends who were involved with formation of the City of Santa Clarita say that back when the "City Formation Committee" was working, they had the chance to choose between at-large Council elections and a 5 District Councilman system. They tell me that they felt very strongly back then that they wanted each of Santa Clarita's 5 Council members to be answerable to and elected by the entire voting population of the new city. I am told they feel the same way today. So it's good that the City of Santa Clarita settled the lawsuit by the same lawyers who overturned Palmdale's most recent elections. However, that doesn't mean the issue is dead, because another set of plaintiffs could sue the City of Santa Clarita again. Here's a link where you can see the Second District Court of Appeals' opinion in the Palmdale case. Click on PDF or DOC: http://appellatecases.courtinfo.ca.gov/sea Unfortunately it is said that some California legislators are working on a bill to force public agencies like Santa Clarita and Simi Valley, and other narrow purpose public agencies, like school districts and water districts, to be split into 5 councilmanic districts, whether the city's residents want that division or not. The proposed law would cut out the need for lawsuits by "voters" to force the change to the 5 Councilman district system. Some lobbying by Santa Claritans who oppose "councilman districts" is needed to try to stop that proposed law from being enacted.

In these California Civil Rights Act cases, the lawyers for the plaintiffs are able to recover their hourly attorneys fees and court costs, at trial and on appeal if they win. The wording of the California Civil Rights Act makes it much easier for plaintiffs' lawyers to get a large attorneys fees award against a public agency than could be won in other "public interest cases" like California Environmental Quality Act cases, Public Records Act cases, Brown Act (Open Meeting) cases etc. In Perry Smith's KHTS article on this topic he has a very salient fact which Santa Claritans should consider: The cost of defending these cases. Smith wrote: "Shenkman, who worked with Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris and Milton Grimes in the three Santa Clarita Valley lawsuits, estimated attorney fees in excess of $5 million in the Palmdale case in a court motion due within 30 days of the initial judgment." So Shenkman, Parris and the additional law firms which piled on to "help" Shenkman and Parris at the appellate court ultimately with get $5+ Million in cash for litigating against the City of Palmdale. In addition, Palmdale will have to pay its own attorneys. Palmdale had 1 outside law firm, plus its in-house city attorneys, at the trial they lost, and 2 outside law firms on their appeal. The aggregate dollar amount Palmdale has spent/will continue to pay its own lawyers on the case is discoverable under the California Public Records Act, even though the details of the bills are not disclosed. My guess is that Palmdale's own attorneys fees, expert fees and court costs will be roughly equal to what Parris & Shenkman and friends bill. So that's roughly $10 Million in Palmdale taxpayers money going out the door on a case they have little chance of winning on appeal, because the trial judge, Mark Mooney was so ardent in his opposition to everything Palmdale tried to do to win the case. In these kinds of cases, the dollar amount of attorneys fees which are run up are driven by the trial judge's personality. In the Santa Clarita Community College District case which is set to go to trial, the judge is Judge Rolf Treu. Is more likely to rule in the Community College District's favor than is colleague Judge Mark Mooney was in the Palmdale trial court case? Only the people down at the court house, watching the proceedings so far, could make an intelligent prediction. Could the Community College District's lawyers win the case? Judges interpret statutes differently, and judges also interpret evidence differently. It's conceivable that Judge Treu could rule that Parris & Shenkman's experts opinions are weak, and as a result that Parris & Shenkman haven't proven the facts of their case required by the text of the California Voting Rights Act. Sometimes miracles do happen. However, the Court of Appeals opinion in the Palmdale case is a published opinion, with a lot of detail as to how the new law works, giving Judge Treu guidance even though he's trying a different case. Let's assume that the Community College District loses the trial, loses the appeal(s) and is hit with a $3+ Million attorneys fees award paid to Parris & Shenkman, plus another $3+ Million in aggregate attorneys fees for the law firms representing the Community College District. All of that money comes out of the College District's budget. Let's say it's $6 Million which will be cut from teachers salaries by reducing the number of classes offered at College of the Canyons. That's truly sad for the students. I've often felt that certain elected officials would spend their public agency's last dime to personally stay in office and "to prove we are right". Law firms which represent public agencies are more than happy to pander to that mentality, because it puts huge amounts of money in their pockets. In fact, a law firm I know very well had custom T-shirts made for their company picnic with this logo silk screened on them "We will spend your last dollar proving you are right". Think about that principle in the context of waste of public education dollars.

Greetings! I know this is kinda off topic but I was wondering if you knew where I could find a captcha plugin for my comment form? I'm using the same blog platform as yours and I'm having problems finding one? Thanks a lot!