Suits Against Gates Cost County Another $475,000

The county has paid a local 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 the last four years the county has agreed to settle for substantial amounts 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 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 to suspect 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 undercover deputies spied on his criminal justice class.

Under terms of the current settlement, Guillory, 45, of Santa Ana gets about $290,000, while his lawyers, Michael Cisarik and Meir J. Westreich, get about $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 disclosing to the public evidence he gathered in preparation of one of the settled lawsuits. The case, filed in 1979 after Guillory was denied a concealed weapons permit, charged that the process Gates uses to grant gun permits is capricious and riddled with favoritism. Gates denied it.

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

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 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, but, she added, candidates have decided to enter the sheriff’s race for far less significant reasons.

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

One Guillory lawsuit alleged that Gates’ gun permit procedure was so fraught with cronyism that it denied Guillory the constitutional right of due process. The other lawsuit charged that Gates investigated Guillory because of the gun permit case and Guillory’s work on behalf of one of the sheriff’s political opponents. Gates has denied any impropriety. The gun-permit lawsuit was headed for trial next month.

In the other case, a federal jury awarded Guillory $189,894 in damages last March on the grounds that Gates improperly investigated Guillory in 1984 shortly after Guillory served a subpoena on a confidential Sheriff’s Department informant.

At the time, Guillory was working as an private investigator for Judge Youngblood, who needed Guillory to find witnesses and evidence for his own lawsuit alleging that Gates’ underlings investigated him for eight years without cause.

Sheriff’s investigators helped develop a criminal case against Guillory on misdemeanor charges that he impersonated a police officer and carried a concealed weapon without a permit when he subpoenaed the informant.

Deputies claimed they had substantial evidence of wrongdoing to justify an investigation. Guillory, however, was acquitted of all charges in 1985.

After Guillory won the harassment suit, attorneys for the Sheriff’s Department appealed the jury verdict. Similarly, Guillory’s lawyers appealed portions of the lawsuit they did not prevail on in court. Meanwhile, U.S. District Court Judge Richard A. Gadbois Jr. awarded Guillory’s lawyers $116,192 in attorney fees.

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Had the gun-permit lawsuit gone to trial, Guillory has said, he was prepared to provide evidence from an investigation of 2,000 concealed weapons permits issued by the Sheriff’s Department between 1975 and mid-1987.

His research purportedly shows that Gates gave out almost 200 gun permits to business associates, friends and political supporters who contributed a total of $121,000 to his campaign coffers.

Guillory, who is under a court order not to reveal the names of permit holders, further alleges that Gates issued 137 gun permits to people who have at least one arrest on charges ranging from drunken driving to lewd conduct.

In addition, he has said he compiled driver’s license information and voter registration records indicated that 10 people have been issued gun permits although they lived out of Orange County. They include a rancher in Texas and Michael Wayne, son of actor John Wayne, both longtime political supporters of Gates.

Staff writer Bob Schwartz contributed to this story.