Pair of Infants in Law Office Draw Cries of Protest From Landlord

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, is like any other lawyers’ office. But in a sunny corner room there is a difference.

There, two contented-looking babies snooze in portable 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.

But the tranquil scene belies the battle being fought over the babies’ quarters.

The building’s landlord claims that babies in an office constitute a “nursery.” They violate the lease agreement, he says, and have to go.

But the women, an attorney and a paralegal, argue that the landlord is violating their rights as women and mothers.

The legal dispute, focusing as it does on the emotionally charged issues of child care and mothers who work outside the home, is attracting considerable attention statewide.

“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.’ ”

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.

Gary D. Mull, building manager for Tishman West Management Corp., on Thursday said the company is consulting with its legal department and has no additional comment. 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.”

But Marlowe countered Thursday: “No one has said anything to us about the babies. In fact, we’ve gotten a lot of support and encouragement from people in the other offices.”

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 mall. Marlowe 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,” she 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 awhile 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 smiled widely. “Look at that smile!” said Marlowe. “Do you realize what I’d be missing if she weren’t 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 attends 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.”

Now, Marlowe added, her work demands a bigger office--the one she and Gilbert have leased in Orange for 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 last 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.

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.”