Security Firm Released From Poll Guard Suit

A federal judge Monday agreed to release a private security firm from a lawsuit after it promised to pay $60,000 to six voters who claim they were intimidated when the Orange County Republican Party placed guards at the polls in last November’s election.

The firm, Saddleback Security Services Corp., had provided GOP officials with 20 uniformed guards on Election Day.

Kathleen Purcell, attorney for the voters, said they agreed to spend $24,000 of the money on legal fees to continue the case and $24,000 on voter education and voter registration programs. She said the remaining $12,000 was to be split among the plaintiffs.

But U.S. District Judge J. Spencer Letts’ settlement approval came amid strong objections from other defendants, who claimed the security firm should be held accountable for at least some of the hundreds of thousands of dollars that they will have to pay in legal fees.

Saddleback is “obviously . . . trying to protect itself from the parties it is really liable to,” said Daniel Livingston, attorney for one of the remaining defendants, of which there are about a dozen, including the state and local GOP party organizations and their leaders.

David A. Robinson, an attorney for another defendant, agreed and argued that the judge might ultimately determine that, but for the acts of the security guards, there was nothing that would have caused the voters to sue.

But Letts was not swayed by their arguments, sticking to a tentative decision he made six weeks ago to allow Saddleback to settle the case.

While making the ruling, however, Letts said that the lawyers’ fees building up in the case were of “serious concern” to him. One defendant alone--the state Republican Party--has already run up fees that are twice the amount of the settlement, he noted. While not directly referring to the state party, Letts said he “would not like to think” that any of the defendants were engaging in “a wear-out tactic” against the voters who filed the lawsuit.

The suit alleges that the guards, who were carrying signs in Spanish warning non-citizens not to vote, intimidated first-time Latino voters and may have frightened them away from the polls on Nov. 8. It seeks damages for the plaintiffs and also to overturn the narrow victory of Assemblyman Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove) in the 72nd Assembly District.

Responding to Rumors

Orange County Republican Party officials, who paid $4,000 to hire the guards at the request of Pringle’s political consultant, have said they were responding to rumors that Democrats planned to bus in illegal voters to tip the election outcome.

Letts said he was allowing Saddleback to settle with the plaintiffs because if the case were not political it “would never have been worth more than the amount being paid right now.” He said the firm would in effect be unfairly punished if required to stay in a drawn-out, politically charged case in the face of escalating legal fees.

Some of the other defendants have contended that the guards went beyond their instructions by approaching and questioning some voters.

“The political issues have to do with intent and why the security firm was there in the first place, not really so much what they (the guards) did contrary to their instructions,” Letts said.

Robinson, who is acting as Pringle’s attorney, complained that the state Fair Political Practices Commission recently made it more difficult for his client to pay his legal bills by putting a limit on the amount of contributions he can receive from supporters.

“Currently, the plaintiffs are cash-heavy and we’re penniless,” Robinson told Letts.

But the argument backfired on Robinson.

“It suggests to me what I already knew to be true, that the major issues here are political,” Letts said. “We have a political fight being waged in the judicial arena.”