Making a Motion to Honor the Work of These Lawyers

She was pretty much raised at Orangewood, the county’s home for abandoned and neglected children. Later, as an adult, times were difficult. She wound up a single mother with four children, no job and a host of personal problems.

She had to leave her children with an aunt so she could piece her life together again. And she did it--for their sake. She got a job, a place to live, and went back for her children. But the aunt wouldn’t give them up.

Here is a different scenario: A young man with AIDS took a disability leave from his job. After clearance from a doctor, he wanted to return to work. His bosses didn’t want him back.

The young man and the young woman in those two situations needed lawyers to fight their battles for them. Neither could afford one.

Enter the privately funded, nonprofit Public Law Center, based in Santa Ana. It helps low-income people with their civil legal difficulties by finding lawyers in the county willing to take their cases without charge. The center found lawyers to handle more than 1,000 cases last year--including those of the two worried clients above.

The young man got his job back, along with a hefty settlement. The young woman got her children back. I’ve singled them out because this week I watched the two female lawyers who won those cases march to the podium at the Public Law Center’s 16th anniversary recognition dinner in Irvine to receive awards for their efforts.

Lawyers come good and bad. But many do start out in law school with the notion they can make a difference in people’s lives. And for some, like Bill Behrndt of Corona del Mar, idealism grows in part from on-the-job training.

Behrndt, 32, started out his career as a corporate lawyer. When he decided last year to go into private practice, he showed up for a refresher course in more general California law. The Public Law Center happened to have a table at the event and Behrndt says he offered to take one of its cases. After that, he said, “I was hooked.”

At Monday night’s dinner, Behrndt was honored with the center’s annual Attorney Advocate Award. He wound up taking more than a dozen cases for the center without charge (or pro bono, as lawyers say). He also spends a couple of nights a month at battered women’s shelters here in Orange County, again offering his advice without charge.

The attorney who helped the woman with four children was Judith Williams, 30, of Orange. She and Erleen Clawson, 43, of Huntington Beach won the New Attorneys award. Clawson also took on more than a dozen clients for the Public Law Center, specializing in senior citizen cases.

Williams said the woman with the four children was not only her first Public Law Center client, but her first client ever as a lawyer.

“It was the kind of case that made me want to go to law school,” she told the crowd.

The lawyer who helped the AIDS victim in his discrimination case was Holly Williams, 30. She accepted an award for it on behalf of her Costa Mesa-based law firm, Robins, Kaplan, Miller and Ciresi. The firm, by the way, took no percentage of their client’s settlement.

The room was filled with attorneys whose careers have included helping out at the Public Law Center over the years. You could almost see them nodding their heads as Behrndt told them about his own pro bono work: “This is the best I’ve ever felt as a lawyer.”

They Weren’t Boxed In: You just never know what a group of neighbors can do when they put their heads together . . .

When a new housing development was started on the east side of Yorba Linda in the 1980s, a children’s park was promised. But the developer went bankrupt before the park was built. The small plot of land for the park, at Foxtail and Via Lomas de Yorba West, has stood empty for eight years.

Now comes the Friends of Box Canyon Park, a group of neighbors who’ve gotten the city’s help in following up on that original playground plan. The city has spent about $100,000 on grading and irrigation to prepare for it. But through fund-raisers and donations, the neighbors are raising the rest--$150,000--for the equipment and the sprucing up of the place with fences, benches and trees.

The plans, said Lynn Kloves, one of the organizers, call for a spectacular playground, with a slide in the form of a volcano, obstacle courses, climbing walls, a treehouse and equipment for disabled children.

The group is trying to enlist 1,000 volunteers to work the first week of November, when the equipment will be installed. Kloves said more than 300 have signed up so far.

She credits Linda and Gary Thorp, who live in a house built by the bankrupt developer, with starting it all. If you want to learn more, call (714) 692-1924.

New Target: What’s this, Robert K. Dornan finally easing up on Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) for taking his congressional seat last year? OK, Dornan did say on cable TV’s Charles Grodin show this week that Sanchez ought to be in jail. (“If you’re going to lie and cheat and steal, the way I think somebody lied me out of office and cheated me, then you [should] go to jail.”)

But Dornan’s strongest venom was directed at O.J. Simpson, Grodin’s favorite target. If you’re white and you think O.J. Simpson is innocent, you’ve just flunked a national IQ test, Dornan said. Other factors enter into it for non-whites, he added. Dornan described Simpson’s Brentwood mansion as his “launching pad” for murder, and his 50th birthday bash there as “the very definition of in your face ugliness.”

Wrap-Up: You almost shudder listening to Bill Behrndt talk about the women who seek legal advice from him at battered women’s shelters.

“Sometimes there will be more than a dozen women who want help,” he said. “Most you can help with just some suggestions. But each time I go, there are always at least one or two who need immediate, emergency relief. They either need a restraining order against someone urgently, or they need to get themselves and their children into a shelter right away. There are a lot of women suffering out there who just can’t afford an attorney.”

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by call-ing the Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823 or by fax to (714) 966-7711, or e-mail tojerry.hicks@latimes.com