County Takes Lawyer Off List Over Billings : Courts: Peggy Moore is suspended from panel of preferred attorneys by Juvenile Court committee because of her accounting practices, say documents obtained by The Times.

A lawyer who billed San Diego County for the equivalent of a year’s worth of 72-hour weeks in 1989 has been suspended from a county panel of preferred attorneys because of irregular billing, according to documents obtained by The Times.

A report drafted last week by the Juvenile Court attorney screening committee upholds the suspension of Peggy Moore, 49, a private attorney who until February, 1991, was frequently appointed to defend people who could not afford a lawyer.

The committee’s report called her accounting practices inappropriate and inadequately documented.

“Ms. Moore’s caseload in general and billable hours in particular were in excess of what a reasonable practitioner at Juvenile Court can handle,” the report said.

The report is the latest development in an 18-month dispute involving Moore, her associates and Elliot Lande, the director of the county’s Department of Alternate Defense Counsel.

Lande’s office provides private attorneys for cases the county public defender’s office won’t take because of conflict of interest. In February, 1991, Lande formally suspended Moore from his office’s preferred list of attorneys--called the Juvenile Panel.

Since December, 1989, when Lande first questioned Moore’s billing practices, Moore has repeatedly claimed that Lande is waging a vendetta against her.

In a January letter from Moore to Judge Napoleon A. Jones Jr., the presiding judge of Juvenile Court, Moore accused Lande of treating her “in a very personal, derogatory and defamatory manner that transcend(s) any possible requirements of the duties of his office.”

Lande has countered that his criticisms of Moore are purely professional.

“An attorney has billed the county for hours she clearly did not work. Whatever else might have occurred, that fact is beyond dispute,” Lande alleged in a Feb. 19, 1991, letter to Jones in which he suspended Moore. “Moore has brought discredit to the attorney appointment program, to the courts and to the administration of justice. This appearance of impropriety can neither be neglected or ignored.”

Moore, who earns $40 an hour for county juvenile court work, was one of 14 private attorneys to whom the county paid more than $100,000 each in 1989. She is a specialist in juvenile dependency cases, in which the county seeks custody of a child it contends has been abused or neglected.

She has said she earned every penny of the $150,350 she was paid that year. And she has defended billing up to--and sometimes more than--24 hours of work a day, explaining that she often billed for a week’s worth of work on a single case on the day that she completed the work.

Last year, Moore was investigated by the county district attorney’s office for billing discrepancies and possible fraud. But, according to Steve Casey, spokesman for the district attorney, that investigation file was closed this month. Moore has not been indicted on any criminal charges.

Moore’s billing practices also caught the attention of a San Diego County Grand Jury--in its civil-watchdog role--that called last month for a simplification of the county alternate defense counsel’s billing process.

Under the terms of her suspension, Moore was allowed to keep her existing cases, but was no longer allowed to receive new appointments through the panel. This April, she appealed her suspension to the attorney screening committee, whose report was issued last week.

The report concluded that Moore, who admits having juggled 461 open cases during the fall of 1989, did not account correctly for her 3,758 billed hours that year.

For example, the report found Moore “billed office staff labor as her own, at the panel rate of $40/hour.”

The report also called “credible” statements attributed to one of Moore’s associate attorneys who apparently told an investigator that Moore told her to bill 80 hours each week, whether those hours were worked or not. Ed Sorensen, an unlicensed private investigator who works for Moore, said Thursday that those statements were hearsay and that the associate attorney never addressed the panel.

“Peggy never told her to bill 80 hours--this was not true,” said Sorensen, who said he was acting as Moore’s spokesman Thursday. “Those statements were made by an investigator, not by (the associate).”

In November, 1989, Sorensen acknowledged, Moore billed the county for 558.55 hours, or a total of $24,995.80. He said that bill covered 344 hours worked during a 30-day period ending mid-October, as well as 214 hours of work done over the previous seven months.

But the committee’s report found that, at best, Moore’s billing practices were unclear.

“Particularly during the periods of October and November, 1989, (her practices) were neither adequately documented nor explained to sufficiently indicate that the time billed was actually time incurred,” the report said.

The committee recommended five criteria that Moore should satisfy before she could be reinstated to the panel: submit a specific policy detailing her billing procedures; discontinue her use of associates until the Superior Court issues a written policy on the subject; carry a lesser caseload (from 200 to 250 cases); have her bills audited on a monthly basis and have her use of investigators regulated.

In a letter dated Thursday, obtained by The Times, Moore told the committee she is already complying with its reinstatement criteria. She said her current caseload consists of just 204 clients--164 minors and 40 adults.

“I would like to put a close to this matter and concentrate on the job at hand, which is ultimately the protection of the children,” she wrote. “As all of the long-term requirements have been in place for over a year now, and the items requiring immediate action are all implemented and firmly in place, I am asking for my reinstatement to full Dependency Panel status.”

“It is highly unlikely she will be reinstated in the immediate future,” said a source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Moore’s suspension from the Juvenile Panel does not prevent her from being appointed to cases; although most judges use only attorneys on the panel, they have the authority to appoint whatever lawyer they like.

“The judge has the legal power to appoint anyone they want to a case, whether they are on my panel list or not,” Lande said Thursday, explaining that technically, his office provides lawyers for judges to appoint “if they want to. They reserve that power but (usually) pass that task on to me.”

Lande said he could not comment on the committee’s report because it is a confidential matter.

But he said that, if a judge appointed Moore in the future, he would authorize payment.

“Any lawyer who does work and bills us, once the work is verified and audited, will be paid the verified amount. That includes Peggy Moore,” he said.