Public Defenders Trading Up to Plush Offices in Van Nuys

When Deputy Public Defender Paul Enright started work at the Van Nuys Courthouse more than a decade ago, offices were hard to come by. Even desks were at a premium.

So Enright was assigned a drawer in a desk that he would have to share with another public defender.

Things have not gotten much better since then. The public defender’s Van Nuys office has contended with cramped and makeshift quarters, faulty heating, unreliable air conditioning, leaky ceilings, insects and mice, said William D. Weiss, head deputy public defender for the Van Nuys office.

Now the office’s tradition of hardship, austerity and clutter is about to end--but not without some jealousy from courthouse colleagues.

Starting this month, the public defenders, along with other courthouse workers, will begin moving into the plush, new, $52-million Van Nuys Municipal Courthouse. By the building’s scheduled opening March 13, the 34 public defenders in Van Nuys expect to be ensconced in their 10th-floor suite of 50 offices in the polished granite edifice.

Their good fortune did not come by accident. As soon as they heard that a new municipal courthouse was to be built, the public defenders were first in line with requests for office space.

“More or less, it was our turn,” Weiss said.

Others in the courthouse have been overheard grousing that the public defenders will occupy an entire floor of new offices.

“I’m just amazed at people’s attitudes,” Weiss said. “You really can feel it in conversations with people. The remarks are made kind of tongue in cheek, but you can hear the resentment.”

Indeed, many seem to be in awe of the spacious gray-carpeted offices, slate-gray mini-blinds and 360-degree views of rooftops and mountain ranges.

During a recent tour of the building’s 10th floor, Van Nuys Municipal Presiding Judge Aviva K. Bobb called it “the most beautiful place.”

It is a far cry from the office space that Deputy Public Defender Linda B. Schwartz remembers when she started working there in August, 1980.

Desk in the Hall

Schwartz was luckier than Enright. She got her own desk. But the desk was in the hall. And she still had to bring a lamp from home.

These days she shares an office, and there is sufficient overhead lighting. But on one afternoon last year, Schwartz emerged from her 10-by-10-foot office covered with 84 mosquito bites.

Said fellow Deputy Public Defender Robert A. Fefferman, “I share my little hovel with mosquitoes, gnats, flies and the odor from overflowed toilets.”

Weiss said there is no question that “since the days we moved in here, we’ve always had the worst offices in the building. The fire marshal comes in once a year and busts us.”

Although Weiss was exaggerating, state fire marshals have cited the public defenders at least once for cluttering the hallways. The piles of papers and files have stayed. There simply is no space in their already brimming offices for the reams of paper work generated by the court system.

In years past, word of the working conditions at the Van Nuys Courthouse had spread among the 540 public defenders in the county, Weiss said. People dreaded assignment to Van Nuys.

“You didn’t want to go to Van Nuys because of the facilities,” Weiss said. “That was the standard statement.”

Now the public defenders look forward to projecting a more professional image in their future offices.

For clients of the public defender’s office, “We’re often the first lawyers they’ve ever had contact with,” Enright said, “and they have the stereotypical view of lawyers’ offices as being like ‘L.A. Law.’ I think it’s important that we come across like a lawyer’s office.”

Some courthouse officials contend that public defenders’ clients do not deserve access to premises that could double for a luxurious television stage set.

“I thought it was a little strange that their clients, who are alleged criminals, have an opportunity to meet with their attorneys and be interviewed in lovely, penthouse-type surroundings with beautiful views, while our witnesses are interviewed in the basement,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Leah Purwin D’Agostino. “I thought that was somewhat incongruous.”

Basement Suite

The deputy district attorneys will occupy a suite of about a dozen offices in the basement of the building. That is partly because they were last to ask for the office space, Bobb said, and partly because they do most of their work in their Superior Court offices anyway.

In addition, many of the public defenders expressed fears that some Superior Court judges had coveted the public defenders’ space.

However, it would be difficult for Superior Court judges to wrest the 10th floor from the public defenders since the building was meant to house Municipal Court personnel.

“There might have been some wishful thinking in the beginning, but that’s all it ever was,” Superior Court Judge Darlene E. Schempp said. “Everyone has said, ‘I think it’s nice that the public defenders are really getting a quality place for a change.’ ”

Said Shirley Flowers, assistant Valley Division chief for Los Angeles Municipal Court: “I don’t think there ever has been any real speculation that anyone could have touched the 10th floor. It’s been the public defenders’ space since the planning.”

The opening of the 11-story, 23-court building has been a long time coming. Originally, it was scheduled to open in August.

5 Opening Dates

“We’ve set tentative opening dates at least five times,” said Peggy Shuttleworth, Valley Division chief of the Los Angeles Municipal Court.

Last year, the delays led to a multimillion-dollar dispute between the contractor, Sylmar-based Tutor-Saliba Corp., and Los Angeles County officials, with both filing lawsuits against each other. The dispute has yet to be resolved, said Jim Abbott, senior deputy director of the county Facilities Management Department.

This month, county workers began preparing the courthouse for its occupants, moving in furniture and applying finishing touches to fixtures. The building passed inspection by fire marshals Feb. 2.

“Believe me, it’s not like the other tentative opening dates that we’ve had,” Shuttleworth said. “This one is much more serious than those. We’re there this time.”