Winners to Pay $241,000 in O.C. Brutality Suit

After finding that two men were victims of police brutality, a jury awarded them $6,000. Then the judge ordered them to pay $241,000 for the officers’ attorney fees.

“As far as I’m concerned, it’s a travesty,” said Thomas Beck, attorney for plaintiffs Jose Bernal and Shawn Choate.

“It was bad enough that they had to get beat up and hurt,” Beck told the Los Angeles Daily Journal. “How do I explain to my clients what happened?”

The case was filed in 1991 and came to trial last month. Orange County Superior Court Judge David Brickner, in a three-page ruling received by attorneys this week, called Bernal and Choate “notorious local hooligans.”

According to testimony, they were beaten with a pipe, a board and a brick, then kicked by deputies who chased them down after another man vandalized a deputy’s car. The deputies had been at a party.

Jurors found that Brian Scanlan and Kurt Bourne misused their authority and used excessive force, and that they and another deputy, Doug Doyle, injured Choate. Scanlan and a civilian were found to have battered Bernal.

Beck has appealed, saying his clients can’t and won’t pay. The attorney said Brickner didn’t even ask to see opposing lawyers’ bills.

“It’s as wrong as wrong can be.” he said. “I dare say, we’ll be back.”