Orange County Settles 11-Year Court Case : Lawsuit: Private investigator and his lawyers are paid $475,000 to end litigation over sheriff’s tactics.

Orange County has paid a Santa Ana private investigator and his lawyers $475,000 to end an 11-year court battle over whether Sheriff Brad Gates harassed his critics with an elite intelligence unit and improperly handed out gun permits to his cronies.

Sources close to the litigation said Friday that the payment is part of a settlement of two federal civil rights lawsuits brought by Preston Guillory that have cost the county about $1 million in payouts and attorneys’ fees since 1979.

All the details of the settlement agreement--still awaiting public approval by the Board of Supervisors--have yet to be revealed, although supervisors met in executive session to consider the settlement two weeks ago.

The payout represents the second time in four years that Orange County has agreed to pay substantial amounts in cases alleging that Gates used his department to investigate political enemies and court opponents.

In the other case, the county paid $375,000 in 1987 to former Orange County Municipal Court Judge Bobby D. Youngblood, an outspoken opponent of Gates and one-time candidate for sheriff. Gates denied any wrongdoing during the case and contended that his department had a legitimate basis for suspecting Youngblood of crimes.

Sharing the award with Youngblood were private investigator Patrick Bland and Rancho Santiago College instructor George P. Wright, another Gates critic who claimed that undercover deputies spied on his criminal justice class.

Under terms of the current settlement, Guillory, 45, of Santa Ana, received about $290,000, while his lawyers, Michael Cisarik and Meir J. Westreich, received $185,000 in legal fees.

According to the 14-page agreement, Gates, Guillory, county officials and attorneys for both sides are barred from discussing the case until mid-March, when a formal announcement of the settlement is scheduled.

Similarly, Guillory is barred from publicly disclosing evidence he gathered while preparing for one of the settled lawsuits. The case, filed in 1979 after Guillory was denied a permit to carry a conceale weapon, charged that the process Gates uses to grant gun permits is capricious and riddled with favoritism. Gates denied it.

Citing a confidentiality order, Guillory and Cisarik declined to discuss the agreement. Gates and his attorney, Eric L. Dobberteen, could not be reached for comment.

Since the settlement was discussed in executive session, supervisors have either declined to comment or flatly denied that the lawsuits were settled.

But, sources said, formal announcement of the settlement is tentatively scheduled for sometime after the March 9 deadline to declare candidacies for sheriff. Gates, seeking his fifth four-year term, is now unopposed.

Eileen Padberg, a longtime political consultant for Gates, denied that there was any effort to delay announcing the Guillory settlement for political advantage. “I am certainly not aware of any planned action,” she said.

Padberg said she did not know if news of the settlement would prompt anyone to run against Gates.

The settlement, when announced, will end an acrimonious decade of litigation in U.S. District Court that has embroiled Gates in some of the harshest controversy of his 16-year tenure.

Times staff writer Bob Schwartz contributed to this story.