Orange County Ordered To Pay $1.6 Million In Attorney’s Fees To Winning Civil Rights Plaintiff In High Profile Case Against Orange County Social Services

Judge Bauer Awards Fees After $4.9 Million Jury Verdict and Issuance
of Permanent Injunction.

     Plaintiff Deanna
Hardwick-Fogarty
brought a civil rights action against Orange County Social
Services and several of its social workers.  (Fogarty-Hardwick v. County of
Orange, Orange County Super. Ct. Case No. 01CC02379, filed in 2001).  The suit
arose from plaintiff’s allegations that, in 2000, she was presented with the
social services version of a Solomonic choice:  either sign a paper that says
you’re a bad parent or lose your two daughters (at the time, aged 6 and 9). 
Plaintiff refused to sign the papers, and the daughters were placed in the
Orangewood Children’s home and later in foster care.  She brought her civil
rights suit and, after six years of hard fought litigation and a seven week
trial, the jury awarded plaintiff $4.9 million in damages against Orange County
and also imposed an additional $6,000 in punitive damages against the two social
workers.  After the jury verdict, Superior Court Judge Ronald
Bauer
issued an injunction against Orange County Social Services requiring
the agency to obtain “reasonable and articulable evidence” prior to initiating
court dependency proceedings alleging abuse, neglect, or child abandonment.  
Judge Bauer also ordered the social services department to stop requiring a
parent to sign an “agency-parent temporary agreement” (like the one presented to
plaintiff) unless the agency has some reasonable evidence to suggest the parents
are hurting their children.

     However, plaintiff’s victories did not stop there.  She moved for an
award of attorney’s fees.  (Although we do not know the grounds, we would assume
under civil rights fee-shifting statutes or Code of Civil Procedure section
1021.5, the private attorney general statute.)  On October 31, 2007, Judge Bauer
awarded plaintiff over $ 1.6 million in attorney’s fees. Orange County and the
two social workers have appealed to the Fourth District, Division 3 (Case No.
G039045).  The appellate docket reflects that plaintiff/respondent’s brief is
due in mid-December 2008, so we should be reporting on the appellate decision in
the upcoming year.

     Shawn A. McMillan,
plaintiff’s lead attorney, was awarded the Orange County Trial Lawyer
Association’s “Top Gun—Trial Attorney of the Year” in the civil rights area in
November 2007.

     BLOG UNDERVIEW—At the trial, County attorneys told jurors that plaintiff
was a former Miss California and dubbed her the “Nordstrom mom” in an attempt to
gain negative inferences.  Several jurors told plaintiff’s lawyers, after the
trial, that these efforts didn’t work.  The message for trial attorneys is to be
careful of how you try to tarnish the credibility of a plaintiff, especially one
with some good facts on his/her side.  

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