California lawmakers, local officials and labor leaders are demanding an audit of Los Angeles County’s historic $4 billion sex abuse settlement as well as a State Bar investigation into a law firm that represents thousands of alleged victims.
The call follows a Los Angeles Times investigation that revealed some plaintiffs in the largest sex abuse settlement in U.S. history said vendors paid them cash to sue the county, with two telling The Times that vendors instructed them to fabricate the claims. All of the plaintiffs in the report had lawsuits filed by Downtown LA Law Group (DTLA), a personal injury firm with more than 2,700 cases in the settlement.
DTLA denied that it had any involvement with vendors, who some plaintiffs said paid them to file suit, and The Times could not reach the vendors for comment.
A majority of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors expressed outrage.
“I’m disgusted,” said Supervisor Kathryn Barger, the chair of the county board of supervisors, which approved the settlement this April. “It is appalling that dishonest lawyers and individuals would exploit reforms that were meant to deliver justice to survivors of abuse.”
On Friday, Barger introduced a motion calling on county lawyers to investigate “any alleged misconduct by legal repreresentatives” involved in sex abuse lawsuits against the county.
DTLA has categorically denied paying people to sue and said no representative of the firm had been authorized to make payments. The firm said they’ve hired a “third-party neutral” to determine if any false claims had been filed.
“The allegations in this story are extremely concerning and describe conduct that is contrary to our firm’s values,” read the statement. “While we do not believe they are accurate, we are taking them seriously.”
The Times investigation found seven plaintiffs who said they were paid by “recruiters” for a law firm outside a county social services office in South Central Los Angeles.
California law bans a practice known as capping, in which non-attorneys directly solicit or procure clients to sign up for lawsuits with a law firm.
Hours after the story, the Consumer Attorneys of California, a powerful lawyer trade group, called for an immediate audit of plaintiffs in the settlement and demanded the State Bar launch an investigation into the plaintiffs claims of being paid and DTLA filing childhood sexual abuse cases.
“This is not a matter that can wait. Illegal ‘capping’ and ‘running’ — generating lawsuits by paying intermediaries to drive claimants to a particular attorney or firm — are corrosive practices explicitly prohibited under California Law,” wrote Geoff Well, president of the group, in a letter addressed to the State Bar and Gov. Gavin Newsom.
“The alleged misconduct, if true, undermines the integrity of our justice system and the voices of survivors who depend on it,” Well wrote. “It is vital that the Bar and the Administration take strong action to show the public that the legal profession will not tolerate bad actors.”
The group also called for Newsom to sign recent legislation passed by Sen. Tom Umberg (D-Orange) to beef up the laws against capping. The bill, which is currently on the governor’s desk, allows people to sue individuals or firms who they believe have directly solicited or procured clients.
“It made me sick to my stomach,” said Umberg, who is chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “The ball is now in the State Bar’s court to vigorously investigate the allegations that are contained in that article.”
Rick Coca, a spokesperson for the bar, said he can’t comment on whether it will launch an investigation. He said, generally, the office can investigate when attorney misconduct is brought to its attention, and that California law prohibits attorneys from making payments, or causing others to make payments, to solicit clients.
DTLA said in a statement they welcome a State Bar investigation and noted they have “systems in place to help weed out false or exaggerated allegations.” The firm said it only accepted a small fraction of the 13,000 people who had reached out in the hopes of filing a lawsuit.
“We believe that if the bar were to investigate the matter, they would conclude what we already know, we acted appropriately,” the firm said. “Additionally, we continue to be deeply concerned that victims of sexual abuse who filed lawsuits under the guarantee of anonymity have been identified and re-victimized” by The Times’ reporting.
Outrage spread quickly through the Hall of Administration Thursday as supervisors began to question the validity of some of the claims the government was poised to pay out.
Supervisor Janice Hahn called the practice of paying for plaintiffs “despicable” and said any attorney guilty of the practice “should be disbarred, and their share of the settlement should go to the victims of abuse.”
The flood of lawsuits follows a 2020 state law change that allowed survivors of childhood sexual abuse to sue the perpetrator even though the statute of limitations had passed on their cases. The county has since been sued by more than 11,000 people alleging abuse inside county-run juvenile halls and foster homes with some claims dating back to the 1950s.
Some supervisors say they want survivors to be compensated for abuse, but the law has left them legally defenseless against fraudulent cases. The county was required to throw out many relevant juvenile records — including who was in their facilities — long ago. The overall system, they say, is too vulnerable to exploitation.
Supervisor Holly Mitchell, whose district includes the social services office where some plaintiffs said they were paid to sue, expressed concern that vulnerable South LA residents were “targeted” and preyed upon based on “race and class.”
She added that allegations of sexual assault should be treated seriously and that survivors deserved emotional and financial support. However, she added, lawsuits need to be vetted and she had asked county lawyers to verify the name of plaintiffs before approving the settlement.
County lawyers said they did what they could to weed out fraud, reviewing statements from plaintiffs and searching for whatever records and witnesses they could find. But the bottom line, lawyers said, is they simply don’t have much evidence, if any, for most of the decades-old claims.
Dawyn Harrison, the county’s top lawyer, put the blame squarely on the law change, known as AB 218.
“Fraud is illegal. Exploitation is illegal. And yet too many plaintiff attorneys are actively drumming up these cases in the hope of a big payday. AB 218 allowed that,” read a statement from Harrison. “Under AB 218, the liability exposure of public entities will only continue to grow. And survivors who deserve justice will continue to be subjected to a legal system hijacked by attorneys acting in their own self-interest who should be held accountable.”
Lorena Gonzalez, the former lawmaker who wrote the bill, said she’s been trying to find a lawmaker to do “cleanup legislation” that would make it easier for jurisdictions to defend themselves. But she also believes the county shares the blame for settling the cases prematurely.
“If a county or an institution settles massively and doesn’t do any kind of due diligence on the individuals in the class, I can’t change that,” she said. “That’s possibly bad lawyering. That’s bad oversight.”
Gonzalez, now the president of the California Federation of Labor Unions, said she believed lawmakers should see if they could “open up” the settlement to examine for fraud.
While the settlement is nearly finalized, the agreement includes a provision that gives the county the right to back out unless all but 120 of the plaintiffs agree to the terms, a number that is unlikely to be reached with more than 11,000 plaintiffs. The money is set to start being distributed in January.
The cases will be reviewed by retired Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Louis Meisinger, who will evaluate the case and decide how much it is worth. Any plaintiff who wants to skip that process can take a $150,000 lump sum payment at the start of next year
Since the county realized they were facing thousands of lawsuits, it has been the job of Fesia Davenport, the chief executive officer, to ensure the county doesn’t go bankrupt. She said she was disturbed to learn some of the claims may have been tainted by fraud and expected the county would receive tough questions about how the lawsuits were vetted.
“At the time, we were acting on advice of counsel and the information that was available to them at the time,” she said. “If we had [The Times’] investigative reporting a year ago, I’m pretty sure things would be different.”
She said she’d like to see the court determine how widespread fraud may be in the settlement before moving forward.
“Everybody should be paying attention to this. The State bar should be looking into this. The Department of Justice should be looking into this. Labor should be concerned about this,” Davenport said.
This year’s brutal labor negotiations were colored by the $4 billion settlement with officials saying the county couldn’t give significant raises to workers because of the massive payout. Most county departments have had to trim their budgets to ensure the government stays solvent.
David Green, the head of SEIU 721, which represents 55,000 county workers, said his members had been texting him all day about the settlement following the report.
“It obviously really raises concerns about how these cases were vetted,” said Green, who’s been with the county for 25 years. “I’m never surprised and I was truly surprised.”
Derek Hsieh, the head of the coalition of county unions, said at one point during negotiations, labor leaders were asked to meet with county lawyers involved in the settlement, so they could get details of how it had wrecked county finances. The ordeal, he says, now “smells like incompetence.”
“It doesn’t appear they performed their due diligence and their own workforce is paying the price. There needs to be personal accountability in the county’s leadership for this,” said Hsieh, who is also the executive director of the sheriff’s union. “Cops are reading this story and you know what they’re saying? ‘Duh.’”
The post Officials demand investigation into claims that plaintiffs were paid to sue L.A. County appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
