Santa Ana Judge Orders Lawyer to Pay $78,000

A lawyer was ordered to pay nearly $78,000 in court costs and his opponents’ legal fees after he described an unapproved photograph with the jury present, causing the judge to declare a mistrial March 18.

Superior Court Judge Francisco F. Firmat accused Christopher E. Angelo of breaking his courtroom rule prohibiting “trial by ambush.” Firmat last Friday ordered the lawyer to pay $19,192 for the cost of the eight-day trial and $58,708 to his opponents for their legal fees.

Presiding Superior Court Judge Donald E. Smallwood called the $77,900 total the largest sanction against a lawyer in recent memory.

Angelo vowed Wednesday to appeal’s Firmat’s decision.

Angelo was representing a woman who had sued the Placentia Linda Community Hospital in Placentia, alleging that hospital officials were negligent when they failed to detect her son’s infection shortly after he was born in March, 1985. Her son developed a brain abscess when doctors allegedly failed to treat the infection, she claimed.

The boy, now 8, suffers partial paralysis, Angelo said.

According to court records, Angelo was questioning a nurse March 16 when he took out and described a photograph of the baby boy with a red mark on his head, lying in his grandmother’s arms. Angelo acknowledged that he showed the photo to the nurse without the judge’s or hospital attorneys’ prior approval, describing the mark as a “wound.”

Hospital officials, who could not be reached for comment Wednesday, contended that the mark was left on the child during birth. But Angelo claimed that the photo would have supported his case because the time shown on the grandmother’s watch would have proven that the mark remained on the baby’s head three hours after a nurse had bathed him.

Jurors never saw the photograph, Angelo said.

Firmat declared a mistrial two days later and last Friday ordered Angelo to pay the legal costs. The judge declined to comment Wednesday.

Firmat wrote in his decision that the lawyer’s action constituted an “intentional use of unfair prejudicial and proscribed trial tactics.”

Angelo countered that he broke no rule except the judge’s and that Firmat’s courtroom rule prohibiting “trial by ambush” is unclear.

“It is not defined, and I do not know what it means,” Angelo said.