-----Original Message----- From: Eumi [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2001 11:52 AM To: Shawn Subject: SF Gate: Gov. Davis vs. schoolkids/High-priced legal team browbeats youths about shoddy schools This is the article I was talking about ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This article was sent to you by someone who found it on SF Gate. The original article can be found on SFGate.com here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/09/02 /MN196010.DTL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Sunday, September 2, 2001 (SF Chronicle) Gov. Davis vs. schoolkids/High-priced legal team browbeats youths about shoddy schools Nanette Asimov, Lance Williams, Chronicle Staff Writers For 24 days this summer, high-priced attorneys from a politically connected law firm grilled 13 witnesses, trying to topple their testimony that California students don't have enough textbooks and that too many classrooms are vermin-infested, overcrowded, sweltering or cold. The lawyers hired by Gov. Gray Davis -- in a case that has cost taxpayers $2.5 million so far -- exhaustively combed through each claim. Some witnesses cried. Others became frightened when the questioning took on the tone of an interrogation. And some were defiant, angry at suggestions that they had lied or exaggerated. The witnesses ranged in age from 8 to 17. Eleven-year-old Carlos Ramirez of San Francisco had once fainted in a 90- degree classroom with a perennially broken air conditioner. He asked to have a substitute testify on his behalf because his mother had been shot to death weeks before. The state's lawyers said no. Carlos and the dozen other students deposed were among numerous children and parents across the state who sued California in San Francisco Superior Court in May 2000. They asked the state to set minimum standards for "basic educational necessities," such as up-to-date books and schools free of mice and rats. "We're just trying to get the state to give us an equal opportunity to learn," said Manuel Ortiz, deposed a few days after graduating from Watsonville High. "In my government class, the book was from the 1980s. The other Bush was president." In the past few years, Davis has directed the state Board of Education to set minimum standards for English, math and other subjects. His campaign promise to make education his "first, second and third priorities" is viewed with skepticism by students and parents because of his reluctance to extend the standards to clean facilities and sufficient textbooks. However, Davis has said that addressing problems at individual schools is not the state's responsibility. "We've got health and safety codes and local school districts" to handle those problems at schools, said Hilary McLean, the governor's spokeswoman, in an interview Friday. McLean added that Davis has been boosting funding to schools. The case, Williams vs. California, pits the state and its self-styled education governor against the students they're aiming to educate. Davis hired the pricey, high-powered O'Melveny & Myers of Los Angeles to defend the state. The students and parents are represented without charge by the American Civil Liberties Union and the big-hitting Bay Area firm Morrison & Foerster. THE DEPOSITIONS Lawyers from O'Melveny & Myers started deposing students in May. Almost immediately, a dispute arose between the firm and the ACLU. O'Melveny attorneys refused a request by the ACLU to let an aunt sit in for the Ramirez boys: Richard, 8, and Carlos, 11. Their mother had been killed on their doorstep just weeks before, the victim of a drive-by shooting. Their father had died in a car accident a year earlier. But because the aunt was not named in the original suit, the lawyers said she was not qualified to represent the boys. Richard dropped out, but Carlos remained. "The case was really important to their mom," said Ana Araya, the boys' aunt. "Carlos knew that." Attorney Michael Rosenthal questioned the child over four days, at one point asking 20 questions about the milk in the cafeteria at Bryant Elementary in San Francisco. Carlos responded in monosyllables, occasionally laying his head on the table. "He was tired, thinking of other things," Araya said. What did emerge from the interview was that the air conditioner functioned so poorly at Bryant that the summer school teacher had to keep a bottle of water to spray on her sweaty children. One was Carlos, who fainted from the heat one day. Rosenthal asked what happened. "I felt like I wasn't there anymore," he said. "Is there a nurse at school?" Rosenthal asked. "No," Carlos said. Rosenthal moved on. O'Melveny attorneys referred questions about the case to the governor's office. However, transcripts illuminate a meticulous approach by the attorneys, who questioned each student about each alleged condition in each class in each grade, one by one. A pattern emerged, as the state's lawyers repeatedly hinted that the problems described were not so bad. "Did the mouse droppings you saw on the floor affect your ability to learn in U.S. history at all?" Rosenthal asked Alondra Jones, 17, of Balboa High in San Francisco. "No," Alondra said. "Did (teacher) Ms. Safir ever tell you why you had to share the 'American Odyssey' textbook in class?" "She didn't have to. We saw that there weren't that many." ". . . You got an A, even though there were a number of unfair conditions in this class, right?" asked Rosenthal. "Just because the state failed doesn't mean I have to," said Alondra. "It didn't impede my ability to learn, but I'm pretty sure you didn't have mouse droppings in your classrooms. . . . Why do I have to?" Cindy Diego of South Central Los Angeles, showed her mettle, returning for three more days of deposition, even after breaking down on the first day. It was a Saturday. After going several hours, the 17-year-old said she was too tired to continue. "I got home at 3 in the morning," she said. "Where were you last night?" Attorney Ben Rozwood asked. Attorney Catherine Lhamon of the ACLU told Cindy not to answer. But Rozwood persisted. "Why were you out so late?" he said, his voice rising. "Did you know you had a deposition today?' " He slammed his palm on the table and Cindy began to weep. "Was it a social event?" he asked. "I certainly wasn't out last night. . . . What were you doing last night?" "I went to a prom," she said. "To a prom. To your senior prom?" "Yes," she said. HIGH-POWERED LEGAL FIRMS O'Melveny & Myers has donated $13,800 to Gov. Davis since 1997. John Daum, lead attorney in the Williams case, is married to Mary Nichols, Davis' secretary of resources. The firm's attorneys charge $325 an hour, and its paralegals are paid $140 per hour. When O'Melveny attorneys visit San Francisco for hearings every few months, they have stayed at the Park Hyatt, where the lowest corporate rate is $285 per night. The cost of depositions is estimated at $1,000 per day for court reporters and transcribers. More legal costs have been racked up by 18 school districts that Davis countersued last December, saying the problem of infestations and inadequate supplies was theirs to fix. Judge Peter Busch back-burnered the suit last winter. The governor hired O'Melveny against the advice of state Attorney General Bill Lockyer. In a memo to the governor's office dated June 22, 2000, he advised against hiring a private firm, estimating that a defense by his office would cost "up to $6 million of state resources over the life of the suit." The state has paid $2.5 million to O'Melveny in the first year and no trial date has been set. Although the attorney general's rate is less than a third of O'Melveny's, Lockyer would have had fewer lawyers on the case. POLITICAL TIES The O'Melveny firm has strong connections to the state and the national Democratic Party. Senior partner Warren Christopher served as secretary of State under President Bill Clinton and was former Vice President Al Gore's lawyer in the Florida vote count dispute. Other former lawyers at the firm include: Kathleen Brown, onetime state treasurer; Louis Caldera, former state lawmaker and secretary of the Army under Clinton; and U.S. District Judge Kim Wardlow, a Clinton confidante. Records show that in the past four years, O'Melveny's senior partners and the firm's political action committee have donated more than $432,000 to political campaigns around the country, including $206,000 to Republicans and $155,000 to Democrats. President Bush is the top single beneficiary, at $17, 250. State Deputy Attorney General Rick Tullis said he expects the hiring of O'Melveny & Myers will result in "gigantic" legal fees. Tullis, who noted he conferred with Lockyer and aides to the governor about hiring a private firm, said he was told that Davis' office had selected O'Melveny after a pitch from Christopher. "It was my understanding that Warren Christopher was the contact," said Tullis. WINDING THROUGH THE COURT The state's lawyers have listed 176 more students for deposition this fall, though the number may drop to 44. Mark Rosenbaum, lead attorney for the ACLU, said the O'Melveny lawyers told him they needed to depose students to oppose his efforts to make the case a class-action suit on behalf of all 6.2 million California public school students. The class action hearing is scheduled for Sept. 13. Although the O'Melveny lawyers did not include the depositions in their arguments, they did give the judge a 33-page summary. "But they didn't use the depositions," Rosenbaum said. "That was the pretense. They did it to harass and intimidate these kids, to get them to pull out of the suit and send a message to kids throughout the state: If you complain about rats and no books, the price you have to pay is four days of deposition and humiliation from the very government entity that is supposed to be assuring you equal education." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2001 SF Chronicle ------------------------ Yahoo! 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