A Mother’s Work: Legal Fight to Care for Infant at Office

Phones ring. File drawers slam shut. People move from one desk to another--conferring, taking notes, consulting legal documents.

In most ways, the office of the Women’s Law Center, on the ninth floor of a posh office building here, is like any other law office. But in a sunny corner room there is a difference.

There, two contented-looking babies snooze in portable baby cribs. Nearby, amid the law books and files, are neat arrangements of baby bottles. A teddy bear with a smile on its face sits on a book cabinet.

The tranquil scene belies the battle being fought over the babies’ quarters. The building’s landlord has charged that having the babies in the office constitutes a “nursery” and breaks the lease.

“This isn’t a nursery,” said Diane J.Marlowe, an attorney who heads the Women’s Law Center. “It’s a working part of the office, and it’s just a place where my baby sleeps, and where the baby of my paralegal also has a crib. But we’re being accused of operating a nursery and being in breach of our lease by being ‘unprofessional.’ ”

Paradoxically, the Women’s Law Center is a private law firm that specializes in cases affecting mothers, such as divorce and child support.

Marlowe, 38, and her husband, Richard C. Gilbert, 39, a lawyer who also operates his law firm out of the joint office, received a notice last month from their landlord, the Tishman West Management Corp. of Orange. The letter said that Marlowe’s and Gilbert’s office lease was “for the sole purpose of a law practice and for no other purpose.”

The letter added: “It is requested that you cease and desist using the aforementioned offices as a nursery.”

In response, Marlowe on Monday filed suit in Orange County Superior Court. “I’m afraid they might try to evict us, and so I want the court to give me a declaration of my rights,” Marlowe said.

The legal dispute is attracting widespread attention because it centers on major issues in the state--child care and working mothers. “I’m getting all kinds of calls on this from other people who are interested,” Marlowe said. She added that she hopes her suit will strike a blow for working mothers throughout the state.

Gary D. Mull, building manager for Tishman West Management Corp., on Thursday said that the company is consulting with its legal department and has no additional comment on the case. Earlier, however, Mull had said that while there had not been any complaints about noise, some other executive suite tenants had complained that a baby’s presence in the office compromised the professional atmosphere in the executive suites.

“You’ve got to remember that the nature of executive suites means that they share many items in common,” such as the reception area, Mull said. He noted that Marlowe’s and Gilbert’s lease has a section addressing “professional conduct” that allows termination of a lease if “more than 50% of the co-tenants feel that (the conduct in question) reflects unfavorably on them or the suite.”

Mull said enforcement of the lease does not mean the landlord is unsympathetic. “Tishman West is not trying to take an anti-child or anti-infant or anti-day care stand,” he said. “But we have had complaints.”

Marlowe on Thursday said she wonders where the complaints may be coming from. “No one has said anything to us about the babies,” she said. “In fact, we’ve gotten a lot of support and encouragement from people in the other offices. There certainly has never been a complaint about noise.”

The room where the two babies are kept does not share a common wall with any other executive office in the 10-story building at 505 City Parkway West, adjacent to The City Shopping Center.

Marlowe’s and Gilbert’s 2-month-old daughter, Jennifer, has one portable crib. Mason Hensley, 1 month old, has the second crib.

Mason is the son of Tina Hensley, 24, of La Verne, a paralegal in the Women’s Law Center. “It’s wonderful that I can bring my son here every day,” Hensley said. “I wouldn’t be able to work otherwise.”

As the business day wore on Thursday, baby Jennifer and baby Mason occasionally awakened. Their mothers picked them up, fed them and sometimes carried them around for a while until the babies fell back to sleep. In the meantime, both women busily went about their office work, answering phones, checking files and consulting on cases.

As Marlowe was holding her infant, the baby gave a wide smile. “Look at that smile!” Marlowe said. “Do you realize what I’d be missing if she were not with me? Day care is not an option for me, I can tell you that.”

Marlowe and Gilbert, who have been married 19 years, have another child, Jeremy, 6, who is in day school. Marlowe said that when Jeremy was a baby, she temporarily worked out of the couple’s home in Mission Viejo “because my law practice was a lot smaller then.”

But now, Marlowe added, her work demands a bigger office--the one she and Gilbert have leased in Orange for the past 11 years.

In her lawsuit, Marlowe said that Tishman West “knew or should have known” that children have been in and out of her executive office for the past 11 years. Marlowe said that the Women’s Law Center “represents women and their children in court concerning custody and divorce cases and other types of cases that are of interest to women and their children. The average fee charged to these clients is generally less than one half of what a reasonable legal fee would be.”

“Many of these clients are unable to afford day care, and therefore it is necessary for these clients to bring their children with them to the law office,” the lawsuit states. “It is therefore common and usual for babies and children to be at the offices of Diane J. Marlowe every day and for most of the day.”

Marlowe said in an interview Thursday that her suit may plow some new legal ground about women’s rights to bring a baby to work. Marlowe noted that other working mothers, including movie-television actress Lynn Redgrave, in recent years have been rebuffed when trying to bring their infants to their working place.

Redgrave in December, 1987, testified before a state Senate committee in Sacramento in support of “the right (of working mothers) to hold down a job and keep our children near us, where they belong.” That same Senate committee, while cool to Redgrave’s plea, acknowledged that California has a severe shortage of day care for children--with about 900,000 low-income working mothers unable to find care for their youngsters.

Marlowe said that caring for children, paired with a mother’s right to be with her child, are twin issues involved in her current legal dispute. “Just because a woman works doesn’t mean she should have to give up her child,” she said.

Added Hensley, her paralegal, as they viewed their two sleeping babies on Thursday: “Things have changed. People are just going to have to get used to it.”