VERDICT WITHOUT COUNSEL APPEAL POSSIBLE IN $12 MILLION JUDGMENT.

Byline: Troy Anderson Staff Writer

Following a trend of larger liability judgments against Los Angeles County government, a judge has granted a proposed $12 million verdict in a case where the county's legal team showed up and then left before the start of the four-day trial.

Superior Court Judge Josh Fredericks granted a directed verdict on July 18 after hearing four days of testimony and evidence from Veronica Oliveros' attorney, Rolando Hidalgo, but none from the county's lawyers.

Following heart surgery at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance in September 1999, Oliveros, 27, of Los Angeles, suffered permanent brain damage after a nurse removed restraints designed to prevent her from ripping out her ventilator when she awoke.

Oliveros pulled the ventilator out of her mouth when she awoke from surgery and suffered brain damage as a result.

The members of the Board of Supervisors are scheduled to discuss the case in closed session Tuesday and decide whether to appeal the proposed judgment.

``This is a bizarre situation on all fronts,'' board Chairman Zev Yaroslavsky said. ``Why did our lawyer not show up to court? They claimed they had another case. My question is why didn't they ditch that case and do our case? And what kind of judge is it that allows a $12 million verdict when the county wasn't there to represent itself?

``Scold the county. Find the attorney. Do something, but to have the taxpayers pay this kind of penalty without a fair fight in court is questionable from my point of view. I've never seen a situation like this in the 27 years I've been in office.''

The verdict comes amid a string of record judgments against the county, including a ruling in June that the county must pay $60 million in back wages to the 500-plus officers of its Office of Public Safety and a $27 million judgment in September against the Sheriff's Department for keeping up to 400,000 inmates in jail beyond their release dates.

These judgments come as the county is facing fiscal crises in health, sheriff's and other departments. In an attempt to raise money to avert a total collapse of the county's health-care system, the supervisors voted 3-2 last week to put on the Nov. 5 ballot a property tax measure that would raise about $170 million a year to keep hospital trauma centers and emergency rooms open.

If approved by two-thirds of voters, the parcel tax would be 3 cents per square foot for houses, offices and other buildings. The levy would equal $42.66 a year for the owner of an average-size home of 1,422 square feet.

Senior Assistant County Counsel Donovan Main said the lawyer the county

hired to handle the Oliveros case, Los Angeles attorney George Peterson, of Bonne, Bridges, Mueller, O'Keefe & Nichols, was engaged in another trial when the Oliveros trial was set to begin July 15 in Compton Superior Court and could not be present in the county's defense.

``We believe the judge abused his discretion and that will be the basis to set things aside and potentially appeal,'' Main said. ``The judgment has not been (formally) entered. There will be an opportunity to deal with the judgment as well as post-trial motions for a new trial and to set aside the directed verdict.''

A spokeswoman for Peterson's law firm referred calls for comment to the County Counsel's Office.

Miguel Santana, spokesman for Supervisor Gloria Molina, who asked to put the matter on Tuesday's agenda, said Molina is outraged the county would hire an attorney who fails to go to trial because he had another ''more important client.''

``And at the end of the day, it ends up costing taxpayers more than $12 million,'' Santana said. ``It's extremely unacceptable. There cannot be any possible excuse for it, and our county counsel should be equally as concerned.''

In June, Molina chastised the County Counsel's Office for spending too much money on outside legal defense attorneys, saying she couldn't believe how they could ``suck us dry like this.''

Molina noted one case where 20 attorneys billed the county, and another case where the legal costs were greater than the settlement itself.

Molina sponsored a motion, passed by the board, calling for oversight controls on outside legal costs and mandatory reporting when costs reach a certain thresholds. County Counsel Lloyd Pellman wrote a letter to the supervisors saying he would notify departments when defense fees and costs exceeded $50,000 and establish peer review committees when fees exceed $100,000 or the estimated liability of the case.

Last November, the Daily News revealed that the county's spending on outside law firms had topped $44 million in 2000-01, almost as much as the $56 million it budgets for in-house attorneys in the County Counsel's Office. The costs for outside firms had ranged from $26 million to $31 million for a half-dozen years until it spiked up in the last few years.

Although figures were not immediately available from the county on how much judgments and settlements had cost it in the last year, Assistant County Counsel Louis Aguilar said the recent record cases may push last fiscal year to the highest cost ever.

The costs have remained relatively stable at around $60 million, with the exception of $76 million in 1998-99.

Aguilar said the trend of larger judgments and settlements against government entities isn't limited to Los Angeles County.

``It's obviously a trend insofar as judgments and verdicts awarded against public entities, particularly of civil rights actions,'' he said. ``You are seeing that trend across the country, not just in California.''

Los Angeles attorney Hidalgo, who represented Oliveros family in the trial, said the county had three lawyers in the courtroom before the trial started, and they all left, even after the judge told them the trial would proceed without them.

``I think what happened here is the firm thought they were bigger than the law and the courthouse and that this judge was going to wait for him and run his court around his schedule and he didn't,'' Hidalgo said.

Hidalgo said Oliveros went to the hospital in September 1999 for a procedure to replace one of her heart valves. The surgery was successful, and she was placed in the intensive care unit in restraints.

``When you awake with a ventilator tube down your throat, it's very painful, scratchy and so by instinct you pull it out,'' Hidalgo said. ``The nurses and doctors know to expect patients to pull it out when they awake. In the middle of the night, one of the nurses took the restraints off.

``So this 27-year-old woman with a husband and two children wakes up and pulls it out. And by the time they re-intubated her, she had suffered permanent brain damage. She requires 24-hour care. Her family is completely destroyed. Her husband is 38, working, trying to raise two kids and providing 24-hour nursing care.''

The case was originally scheduled for trial in January, but was continued until March 5. But Peterson was in trial in San Francisco, so the judge rescheduled the trial for July 9, Hidalgo said. On July 9, Peterson asked the judge for another continuance, and Fredericks continued the trial again to July 15.

After the July 9 continuance, Peterson filed a writ of mandate with the state appellate court asking them to stop the trial. But the appellate court ruled against it. The county appealed that to the California Supreme Court, but it also refused to stop the trial.

``On July 15, three lawyers appeared on behalf of the county,'' said Hidalgo, referring to Peterson, Principal Deputy County Counsel Gary Miller and the county's appellate attorney Martin Stein.

``The judge said we are ready to go,'' Hidalgo said. ``Call in the jury. But Peterson asked to be excused, and the judge granted his request. Then Miller and Stein left.''

Hidalgo said the trial proceeded, and after four days of presenting evidence and testimony, he made a motion for a directed verdict, and the judge granted it.

A similar case occurred in 1977 in San Bernardino County, when the defense attorneys for the Doria Mining Co. did not appear for a trial in which the plaintiff was the county. The attorneys had asked for continuances to accommodate their schedules, but the judge refused. The mining company's attorneys appealed the judgment, but the appellate court upheld the judgment.

Yaroslavsky said he's not sure what the supervisors will decide to do Tuesday.

``It's an outrage on all fronts, and the board is quite exercised,'' Yaroslavsky said.