Lawyer Seeks $40,000 Back Pay for City Cases

A local attorney filed legal papers Thursday demanding about $40,000 in back fees from the city of Los Angeles after learning that another city-hired attorney earns a higher hourly rate than city officials had paid him, saying it was their standard pay.

Stephen Yagman, a Venice lawyer who has made a career out of suing the Los Angeles Police Department, said Thursday that in two previous cases a federal judge forced the city to reimburse him $125 an hour in the cases he won, based on evidence that that was its typical rate for outside counsel.

But now Yagman wants another $125 an hour for the 320 hours for which he was reimbursed in those cases because of a Times report Wednesday that the defense attorney for Councilman Nate Holden in recent sexual harassment suits--who happens to be the same lawyer representing council members in one of Yagman’s cases--is being paid $250 an hour.

“I’m looking more for justice and to humiliate the city and the firm than I am for money. I’m looking to expose hypocrites,” Yagman said in an interview. “It appears that somebody wasn’t honest and misled a federal judge, and I wonder what the federal judge might do about that. Federal judges don’t like to be misled by lawyers.”

The Times disclosed Wednesday that private attorneys have billed the city nearly $1.3 million for defending Holden in two lawsuits that he won last fall. An outside firm is currently auditing those bills.

The two cases Yagman moved to reopen are lawsuits filed by Johanna Trevino, the daughter of a man who was fatally shot by Los Angeles officers after robbing a McDonald’s restaurant in Sunland, and Barbara Gillen, a librarian who was searched by police at Los Angeles International Airport. Officials at the city administrative office and the city attorney’s office were unable late Thursday to find records that would show the hourly rate paid to the private attorneys in those cases.

The city has a group of private attorneys called the “conflict panel” that it typically turns to when it needs outside counsel because its own attorneys face a conflict of interest in handling a case. In a declaration to the court in the Trevino case, a representative of the administrative office testified that conflict panel attorneys earn $125 an hour and that contract rates for outside lawyers before the conflict panel was created ranged from $125 to $175 an hour for partners.

In both the Holden and Trevino cases, attorneys from the Century City firm Christensen, White, Miller, Fink & Jacobs were not on the conflict panel, but were hired through individual contracts.

Annette Keller, the deputy city attorney who worked on the Trevino case, said late Thursday she had not seen Yagman’s latest filings. “It’s a closed case,” Keller said. “The fees have been awarded, the declarations are true. Beyond that, I’d have to look at it to see what he has to say.”

But Yagman questioned whether tax money is being wisely spent. He noted that the city fought successfully to cut his hours in half, and suggested that it should be equally vigilant in scrutinizing the bills of its own lawyers.

“Let the city fight [that] bill the same way they fought my bill and everybody should be very happy,” Yagman said. “It would do justice for all.”