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Court awards attorney’s fees
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Posted on Sep 05 2005
The U.S. District Court has awarded attorney’s fees to several lawyers who had rendered services to a person with mental disability who had sued the Department of Public Safety and its former commissioner, Edward Camacho.
Chief Judge Alex R. Munson awarded a total of $26,183.60 in fees to Steven Parks’ lawyers—all from the O’Connor law firm.
The judge awarded the following attorneys with the respective amounts: Robert O’Connor, $322; David Banes, $12,144; Joseph Horey, $230; and Eric Bozman, $7,185. The judge also awarded some $1,610 and $3,522 to law clerks Catherine Chang-Sanders and Jacob Ouslander, respectively, and $1,170 to paralegal Auralon Sabangan.
Parks and the defendants had earlier reached a settlement in the amount of $3,300, which was limited to assisting him travel to the U.S. mainland to enter an appropriate medical facility. The defendants admitted no liability.
The suit stemmed from the police department’s alleged mishandling of Parks, a person with pronounced emotional and mental disabilities. Parks condition had resulted in almost 40 encounters with local police, all of which were not prosecuted.
Parks’ lawyers said the encounters were severe enough to warrant psychiatric hospitalization several times. At one point, police arrested Parks, who inflicted injury on himself.
“Had they properly frisked [Parks] after taking him into custody, they would have discovered the cutting tool he later used to injure himself,” the attorneys said.
The settlement did not include some $100,000 in monetary damages that Parks initially sought in the lawsuit.
