Ruling Forbids Court Action That ‘Intimidates’ the Poor

Municipal Court judges in north Orange County can no longer order welfare recipients and other low-income residents through what a lawyer called a series of “demeaning and intimidating” procedures before waiving court fees, a Superior Court judge ruled Thursday.

“I want the code complied with,” Superior Court Judge Harmon G. Scoville said Thursday. “The court mandates that Municipal Court in north Orange County district comply.”

The decision ends a protracted legal battle that began last July, after low-income residents said they were “intimidated” at a special hearing and then ordered to be “interrogated” by county auditors to prove their inability to pay, said Richard L. Spix, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys.

The lawsuit was brought against William F. McDonald, then presiding Municipal Court calendar judge and now on the Superior Court bench in Santa Ana.

The case involves co-plaintiffs Maureen and Leonard Shout and Kathleen Roquemore, a welfare mother of two. They had helped spearhead an Anaheim apartment rent strike after their landlord allegedly failed to make repairs and attempted to evict them.

The Shouts had stated, under penalty of perjury, that their income was within guidelines established by the Judicial Council of California that made them eligible for waiver of court and jury costs.

“I and my husband have never asked for a free ride,” Maureen Shout stated in court documents. With her husband out of work and needing surgery, Shout said, “we couldn’t afford to pay the court costs.”

Roquemore stated that she was receiving aid, including food stamps, and was unable to pay the costs of defense against the eviction.

Spix said McDonald refused to grant a waiver, stating no grounds, and instead “intimidated” the Shouts with questions about their personal finances in an open hearing and ordered them to undergo a subsequent four-hour “interrogation” by a county collections chief--all without proper legal authority.

“Nowhere in the law does it say a judge has a right to treat poor people like this,” said Spix, who petitioned Superior Court Judge John J. Ryan and won a court order Oct. 3 that in part prevented McDonald and any other north court municipal judge from continuing the practice.

But McDonald later ordered another welfare mother, who was disabled, through the same process. Nancy Kaufman, a former Legal Aid managing attorney now in private practice, filed a lawsuit Dec. 2 seeking a contempt citation against the judge for allegedly violating the previous order.

On Thursday, Scoville did not decide the contempt portion but instead made a “clarification of the law.”

Kaufman, who argued the case before Scoville, said she wasn’t seeking penalties against any judge.

“We just want judges in north court to start obeying the law,” she said.

Legal Aid lawyers won a similar case against South County Municipal Court in 1982. The case was filed on behalf of residents in south Orange County receiving some type of aid, including an elderly retiree on Supplemental Security Income, whose applications to waive court costs were improperly denied.

Ruling Called Vague

Judge McDonald said in an earlier interview that he had followed the law as he had interpreted it. He insisted that he followed the previous Superior Court ruling by Ryan but said that it “was vague.”

McDonald said the use of special hearings in such cases, known as in forma pauperis proceedings, is in a legal gray area. McDonald said the law seems in conflict with the California Rules of Court, which also sets policy in these cases.

“That’s been the trouble. We have two sets of standards here and it makes it very vague,” said county counsel Gene J. Axelrod.

Under a 1979 law, low-income residents who either receive welfare or some type of public assistance or fall within poverty guidelines of the Judicial Council of California can be exempt from paying filing fees, court costs and jury fees, which can run to $300 or more per day. That law allows a judge to hold a hearing when he has reasonable suspicion that the applicant has given erroneous information, but the rules allow a judge to hold such a hearing at any time.

Part of the confusion, said Judge C. Robert Jameson of Central Municipal Court, stems from the fact that the law is rarely used.

“I had a number of these applications come before me recently and I had to look up the law to find out how to deal with them,” Jameson said.

Legal Fears for Poor

Spix and attorneys elsewhere in the state providing legal assistance to the poor expressed a fear that if similar court actions go unchallenged, access to the civil legal system for poor residents would be restricted.

Already, attorneys fear that legal access for the poor is slowly closing due to high costs and cutbacks by Legal Aid and other community-based legal centers for the poor.

Orange County Legal Aid and other legal centers rarely accept tenant eviction cases any longer. “They’re given a pamphlet and told to act as pro per (their own attorney),” Kaufman said.

The Stout case will be included in a case challenging the treatment of the indigent in court now being prepared by Legal Services of Northern California in Chico, according to Lucy Quacinella, a lawyer with the group.

“We’ve had elderly people missing doctor’s appointments, others missing work, job training and other hardships,” Quacinella said. “The approach is more intimidating and humiliating because of the nature of the inquiry.”

Quacinella and other attorneys contend that such hearings cannot be held before an application for a waiver is decided unless the court “has a suspicion or reason to doubt the veracity of the applicant’s statements.”

Ruling’s Effects Limited

Scoville’s ruling applies only to North Orange County Municipal Court. The ruling Thursday does ensure that north Orange County residents receiving Supplemental Security Income, State Supplemental Payments, Aid to Families With Dependent Children, food stamps or county relief, general relief or general assistance can automatically be granted fee and court cost waivers.

Waivers will also be granted automatically for residents who state under penalty of perjury that their gross monthly income falls within state judicial council guidelines. For example, a family of five must earn less than $1,296.89 monthly to qualify.