Dumped Lawyer Criticizes Johnnie Cochran

Pasadena attorney Joe C. Hopkins had landed the biggest case of his 20-year legal career, one that would thrust him into the national spotlight, one with the potential of a huge settlement.

Hopkins was representing 16-year-old Donovan Jackson in the Inglewood police beating that had been caught on videotape. He had been on the “Today” show, “Good Morning America” and CNN. He had enlisted help from John Sweeney, a noted attorney who had mentored under one of the best: Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. Together, Sweeney and Hopkins filed a lawsuit in federal court.

But then, just as quickly as they were in, they were out--replaced by none other than Cochran himself.

Now, a bitter Hopkins is portraying himself as the latest in a string of small-time lawyers big-footed by Cochran, whose law firm has expanded nationally in recent years. It is an assertion that resonates among several other attorneys whose high-profile clients left them for Cochran.

Plaintiffs can’t be blamed for wanting higher-profile lawyers as their cases turn into social causes and become daily headlines. But in a climate in which lawyers are reluctant to publicly criticize colleagues--particularly powerful ones like Cochran--Hopkins has declared war. He is not only speaking out, but also airing his gripes in a free, 10,000-circulation weekly newspaper he publishes.

“Yes, it’s sour grapes,” said Hopkins, who shares a converted duplex office with another attorney. “But there is nothing wrong with complaining about sour grapes. He took a case from me, and that is what he does. Cases show up on the national radar, and he ends up with them. No matter who had it in the beginning.”

Cochran did not return phone calls seeking comment.

But in a July 23 letter to Hopkins, Cochran said that Hopkins had provided “substandard” service and that Jackson and his father, Coby Chavis, had “lost all faith and confidence in you.” Cochran also wrote that he had subsequently offered Hopkins a role on the legal team but that Hopkins refused.

Erwin Chemerinsky, a constitutional law professor at USC, said Cochran’s credentials in a string of police-abuse cases dating to the 1960s make him irresistible to many clients.

“He has credibility with juries.... To the extent that media matters, he’s someone who can get media coverage,” Chemerinsky said. “My sympathies are with the lawyer who lost the case, but you have to look at it from the client’s perspective.”

Added John Burris, a civil rights attorney: “It’s a very competitive business. Who do you want to be at bat? Barry Bonds or the guy on the triple-A farm team?”

Hopkins was retained by Jackson and his father July 8, two days after the beating, to represent them in a civil suit. A few days later, the attorney said, he began getting feelers that Cochran was preparing to step in.

“I felt like I had just gotten a message from the mob godfather, tantamount to saying there is too much notoriety and money at stake for the godfather to miss this case,” Hopkins wrote in a July 25 editorial in his Pasadena Journal. “Godfather or not, it was an offer I could and did refuse.”

About the same time, Hopkins said, he received a message that another attorney, Milton Grimes, best known for representing police-beating victim Rodney King in his lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles, was “seeking out” the case.

Grimes sent Hopkins a letter saying he represented the family. Cochran then moved in, Hopkins wrote. Ultimately, Cochran became Jackson’s lawyer, and Grimes took over representation of the father, the subject of the police stop that led to the Jackson beating.

“I then realized that I was experiencing the underbelly of the legal profession, up close and personal,” Hopkins wrote. His editorial included a cartoon depicting Cochran, dollar bills stuffed in his pockets, with six hands grabbing cases in states across the country. (That was a reference to the fact that Cochran’s firm--Cochran, Cherry, Givens & Smith, which has more than 100 attorneys--has opened offices in New York, Alabama, Illinois, Georgia, Tennessee and Washington, D.C.) On the next page, the paper had an article on “capping,” a practice in which an attorney employs someone to solicit cases.

In Cochran’s letter to Hopkins, he wrote, “I never did anything to solicit or otherwise obtain this case.... I was contacted and ultimately retained by Mrs. Chavis and Donovan Jackson because the clients were very unhappy with your representation.”

Grimes, who became King’s attorney after King grew dissatisfied with another lawyer, also denied Hopkins’ claim. “I don’t have to steal cases. There are plenty of cases out there,” he said. “I have never stolen a case. It is unethical and dishonest to steal cases. I don’t advertise. I don’t use cappers. My cases come by word of mouth.”

Chavis said in an interview that he decided to change attorneys because Hopkins improperly put his son in front of television cameras shortly after the beating. In response to a question about how he was feeling, Donovan said he was OK.

“My son made a slight mistake when he said he felt OK,” Chavis said. “The attorney should have been closer to my son to stop him from saying that. He tried to clean it up, but the harm was already done.” Hopkins declined to respond to Chavis’ criticism.

Cochran first became prominent as a plaintiff’s attorney with his representation of a young black man named Leonard Deadwyler, who was shot to death by police as he tried to rush his pregnant wife to the hospital in 1966. In the early 1970s, Cochran defended Black Panther Party leader Geronimo Pratt against murder charges. He then became a high-ranking county prosecutor. After returning to private practice, he won a judgment on behalf of Ron Settles, a college football player who Signal Hill police said hanged himself in a jail cell after being picked up for speeding.

It was against that backdrop that Cochran became a member of O.J. Simpson’s criminal defense “Dream Team.” Later, the attorney was part of the team of lawyers that won a $3-million settlement in Riverside for the survivors of Tyisha Miller, a black 19-year-old woman killed by a white police officer.

Hopkins, described by colleagues as having built a solid practice, said his sense of betrayal is deeper because of the admiration he had felt for Cochran. He said he had long believed that Cochran improved the standing of African American lawyers such as himself. He recalled giving Cochran a standing ovation when Cochran walked in to address a gathering of black attorneys. And he said he had defended Cochran against a public opinion backlash after a jury acquitted Simpson of murder.

Cochran and his associates have won settlements beyond Los Angeles in recent years, including $18 million in the police shooting death of unarmed black motorist LaTanya Haggerty in Chicago in 1999 and $8.7 million in a suit filed by Abner Louima, the Haitian immigrant tortured with a broken broomstick in a New York police station bathroom in 1997.

Brian Figeroux, an attorney who represented Louima before Louima replaced him with Cochran’s office, criticized Cochran’s operation as a Wal-Mart-style big business whose magnitude makes it difficult for local minority attorneys to maintain a base. “When he comes into the community, how many businesses does he destroy?” Figeroux asked.

In another New York police case, Cochran overshadowed the first attorney hired by the family of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed West African immigrant whose death in a barrage of police gunshots in 1999 raised racial tensions. Lawyer Kyle Watters said he was forced into a secondary role once Cochran entered the picture. (Ultimately, the family discharged the entire Cochran team.)

“I think Cochran as an attorney should be free to make as much money ... as he can,” Watters said. “My problem is ... when someone else is hired and he comes in and pushes them out of the way. I think that’s wrong.”

Cochran doesn’t always prevail in these matters.

Soon after he agreed to represent Jackson, he took the case of a 32-year-old man who said he had been beaten by the same Inglewood police officer who beat Jackson. Cochran was hired to replace a young attorney straight out of law school. But the plaintiff changed lawyers again, replacing Cochran with Steve Lerman--the lawyer who was once Rodney King’s civil attorney, only to be replaced by Milton Grimes.