Dependency Court Investigation Begun : Probe: District attorney’s office responds to grand jury report citing unreasonably large bills from lawyers.

District attorney’s officials have launched an investigation into legal billings in the county’s troubled Dependency Court, after a blistering grand jury report on a system “heavily laden with attorneys” suspected of “submitting claims which appear unreasonably large and possibly flagrantly abusive.”

The report, dated June 1 but presented to the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, recommends that the board order an audit of the lawyers and added: “the names of these attorneys have already been referred to the district attorney’s office . . . and an investigation is presently under way.”

Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner, confirmed Tuesday that an investigation of the attorneys’ billings is being conducted by the office’s consumer affairs division.

The study found that dozens of attorneys were billing the county for more hours than the courts were open, and that one attorney submitted a bill for 4,786 hours--more than 90 hours a week for 52 consecutive weeks.

The grand jury found that billing irregularities were exacerbated by the court system’s dependency on “handwritten documents (that) are often illegible and incomplete.”

The court system, which hears 41,000 cases of abused and neglected children, “has no effective fiscal control over expenditures for (155) panel attorneys” who collectively earned nearly $10 million last year. Although 14 judges independently review and authorize attorney claims quarterly, “Their review is based on little more than memory and trust,” the report found.

Marcus Tucker, supervising judge of the Dependency Court, agreed Tuesday that the attorneys’ billings, as described by the grand jury auditors, “are hard to imagine.” He accepted the grand jury study as “basically a good document” and added that as of July 1, the court began using an automated billing process that may help curb abuses.

In addition to the billing problems, the grand jury found that the taxpayers are picking up the tab for virtually everyone represented before the court, “whether or not they are indigent.”

“Little attempt is made to identify and collect from those who have the ability to pay,” the report concluded. “While it is recognized that the majority of families using county-provided legal services are disadvantaged, it seems highly unlikely that 99% of these families have no ability to pay.”

Auditors found that only 35 of 4,000 people represented before the court were asked to pay their legal bills.

Besides the billing problems, the grand jury found a system lacking any standards for performance by private attorneys and potential conflicts of interest for county staff attorneys who sometimes represent children and the Department of Children’s Services.

“There is significant evidence that in spite of its legality, dual representation is frowned upon within most of the judiciary and is not widely accepted outside L.A. County,” the grand jury found.

The Board of Supervisors ordered the county chief administrative officer to work with court officials to develop a cost containment plan that would centralize billing, monitor attorney claims and identify parents who are capable of paying their legal bills.

The board also asked that standards of training and performance be developed.