City of L.A. Ponies Up An Additional $550,000 in Attorney’s Fees and $380,000 in Interest on Jury Award/Fee Award to Two White Fire Captains.
You may have seen media coverage of the 2004 firehouse incident in which Los Angeles firefighter Tennie Pierce, who was known as “Big Dog,” was fed dog food in his spaghetti through a claimed prank by another Latino firefighter. Two white fire captains were suspended as a result, filing a racial discrimination lawsuit alleging that the L.A. Fire Department discriminated against them in the punishments they received for the incident. A jury awarded them $1.6 million, even though plaintiffs’ attorney said his clients were willing to settle for $250,000 before the matter went to trial.
Recently, the L.A. City Council approved a settlement payment of $2.5 million to the two captains, with the extra costs consisting of about $550,000 in attorney’s fees and $380,000 in interest payments on the jury and fee awards. Besides that, the city spent an additional $1.3 million on legal fees in the Pierce case.
More on this settlement and underlying facts can be found in Sam Quinones’ July 3, 2010 article “L.A. to pay $2.5 million to two fire captains in Tennie Pierce Case” available for reading at latimes.com.
Colfax Upset At Settlement Agreement Controversy, Including Fees Exposure under the Clean Water Act.
The Clean Water Act, passed in 1972, allows for “citizens suits” when government regulators are ignoring pollution violations and requires polluters to pay the attorney’s fees of the prevailing party. The City of Colfax, a tiny Sierra foothill town in California, is not happy about its potential exposure under the CWA.
Colfax—with a population of 1,500 people and an annual operating budget of $1 million—settled a lawsuit with farmers Allen and Nancy Edwards arising from claims that the city violated the CWA numerous times by allowing untreated waste water to leave its sewage plant upstream of the Edwards farm. The city agreed to pay $130,000 to the Edwards and an additional $320,000 in attorney’s fees/expenses as part of the prior settlement. However, the Edwards are back in court early this year, claiming that Colfax engaged in more than 4,000 violations of both the settlement agreement and CWA, with the city admitting to a few violations but disputing the amount demanded by the Edwards to resolve the dispute.
The Edwards have demanded a $2 million fine and $180,000 in additional attorney’s fees. Colfax is upset that plaintiffs’ lawyers were billing San Francisco hourly rates of $550 rather than the lower Sacramento hourly rates of about $300. Colfax is considering bankruptcy unless a settlement can be forged. A federal court hearing on the farmers’ claims was cancelled so that a compromise could be explored.
However, this dispute pales in comparison to the BP oil spill incident. Environmental groups recently filed a $19 billion CWA lawsuit, the largest such lawsuit from a historical standpoint. (No wonder that recent television news broadcasts have been reporting on BP’s efforts to “shore up” its finances and also reported on BP’s retention of attorneys/noted experts right away after the spill occurred.)
Paul Elias, in his article “Small town, big Clean Water Act problems,” provides more factual background to the Colfax and other CWA lawsuits—an article that was posted July 3, 2010 at MercuryNews.com.
We hope our readers all had an enjoyable July 4th weekend!
