Redistrict Plaintiffs Ask County to Pay $8.1 Million in Bills : Supervisors: Groups that led fight to redraw boundaries seek attorney fees and other costs. A county board member calls the request ‘obscene.’

The victorious plaintiffs in the redistricting lawsuit that led to the election of Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina filed court papers Monday seeking $8.1 million in attorneys fees and other costs from the county--more than twice what the county expected.

That figure, if awarded, would bring the total bill to the county for fighting and losing the redistricting case to more than $14 million. The county has spent $6.3 million, mostly on fees paid to private lawyers.

The fees sought by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund--ranging from $120 to $300 an hour--cover the work of 21 lawyers assigned to the three-year case, according to an eight-inch stack of documents filed in federal court.

The amount of money being sought is about 2 1/2 times more than the total hourly billings by the plaintiffs’ attorneys. The attorneys said they are entitled to the “fee enhancement” because of the importance of the case and the need to encourage private lawyers to take on similar cases.

“Unless the courts begin to provide incentives to the Bar to undertake representation of victims of civil rights violations, only those victims who have suffered substantial monetary damages will be able to obtain competent legal counsel,” say the plaintiffs’ court papers.

By law, the plaintiffs are entitled to attorneys fees. The county can--and should, according to at least one supervisor--dispute the charges.

“I am shocked,” Supervisor Deane Dana said. “This is a lot of mental health service, a lot of other services, too.”

Said Supervisor Mike Antonovich: “This is the obscene final insult placed on the backs of Los Angeles County taxpayers.”

A spokesman for Molina said that on the advice of county counsel, Molina, a former director of MALDEF, will not comment or take any position on the attorneys fees.

The plaintiffs hope to reach an out-of-court settlement with the county. If no agreement is reached, a hearing will be scheduled before U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon.

Kenyon ruled last year that the all-Anglo board had discriminated against Latinos in drawing district boundaries in 1981.

The decision, upheld in January by the U.S. Supreme Court, led to the drawing of a new map that changed representation on the board for hundreds of thousands of county residents. Running in a new, predominantly Latino 1st District, Molina last month was elected the first Latino supervisor this century.

“Given the high cost of litigation, we sincerely regret that the county chose to litigate its defense as tenaciously as it did,” MALDEF president and general counsel Antonia Hernandez said in the court papers. “But it did and it lost. The winners, the Hispanic community . . . will continue to be benefited as a result of the attorneys’ fees awarded in this case.”

In addition to the $6.3 million it spent fighting the lawsuit, the county recently agreed to pay $199,500 to the Justice Department, another plaintiff. The Justice Department, which spent about $2 million on the case, could not seek attorneys fees, but negotiated a settlement on its cost of copying hundreds of thousands of pages of exhibits.

The county’s redistricting costs have been paid through a $36-million fund set aside each year by supervisors for legal expenses, including settlement of lawsuits. About $13 million in uncommitted funds were left in the fund as of Monday, officials said.

An official in the county counsel’s office said he is checking on other legal costs and could not say whether there will be enough left in the fund to pay the plaintiffs without seeking more money from the Board of Supervisors.

When the plaintiffs fees are awarded, the redistricting case may surpass the county’s costliest litigation--$13.8 million spent to fight lawsuits brought by the owners of property damaged in Malibu’s Big Rock Mesa landslide in 1983.

Hernandez said the costs are reasonable “given the heavy burden of proof shouldered by plaintiffs in voting rights cases.” She said the case required “extensive factual investigations into historical records of all kinds” and more than 150 depositions.

The plaintiffs’ costs also include $152,942 for expert witnesses, including UCLA demographer Leo Estrada, who drew the redistricting plan now in effect.

“This lawsuit was legally and factually complex,” said E. Richard Larson, MALDEF vice president for legal programs. “It was tenaciously opposed by the county, and it involved a very lengthy trial.”

The plaintiffs are seeking fees of up to $300 an hour for attorneys from the ACLU and MALDEF and private lawyers who assisted the plaintiffs, including the law firm of Loeb & Loeb and attorney Joaquin Avila. MALDEF’s lead attorney, Richard Fajardo, reported spending 3,539 hours on the case.

The county’s chief attorney, John McDermott, received $290 an hour. The plaintiffs’ chief attorney, Mark Rosenbaum of the ACLU, is seeking $300 and Fajardo is seeking $240.

Hernandez said that rates are “substantially less than the $375 per hour that the county reportedly paid to one of its lawyers” and do not include “the hours expended in responding to the media in this media-intensive case.”