State to pay attorney over bungled appeal

By Mike Carter
Seattle Times staff reporter

Christine Gregoire

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The state has settled a lawsuit filed by a former Washington assistant attorney general who was forced to resign after the state bungled the appeal of an $18 million tort verdict.

The state agreed to put attorney Janet Capps back on the payroll — and for the first time acknowledged she may not have been at fault in the appeals blunder.

Capps will receive $195,000 now, plus $30,000 paid over the next three years. She also gets a $50,000-a-year, nonlegal job with the state Office of Archaeology and Historic Preservation, a salary roughly $20,000 lower than her job with the Attorney General's Office.

The state's retirement contributions to Capps, which stopped after her forced resignation in 2000, will be restored and her attorney will be paid $100,000.

Attorney General Christine Gregoire, a Democratic candidate for governor this year and a defendant in the lawsuit, said she agreed to settle the lawsuit after learning of new, medical-related evidence that indicated Capps did not intentionally let an appeals deadline pass in what, at the time, was the largest tort verdict in state history.

Capps was forced to resign in June 2000 after an attorney hired by Gregoire to investigate the incident concluded she had acted intentionally.

Gregoire said the new evidence involved an undisclosed medical condition and medication that Capps was taking at the time. Privacy laws prevented the state from knowing earlier about the condition, which neither side in the suit would disclose.

The Beckman case A jury in 2000 ordered the state to pay $17.8 million to three developmentally disabled men — Damon Beckman, Eric Busch and William Coalter — who were sexually and physically abused in a state-licensed Bremerton adult family home. The state missed a deadline to appeal the verdict. An investigator blamed assistant attorney general Janet Capps for missing the deadline.

Learning that Capps suffered from the condition, Gregoire said, led her to an "aha! moment" of understanding. Gregoire said she would have offered to help Capps had she known about the condition at the time.

"I consider this a compassionate and reasonable settlement to a very unfortunate mistake," the attorney general said.

Yesterday, Capps said the state's explanation of what happened was wrong and self-serving.

"That's what Ms. Gregoire, as a candidate for governor, has to say to explain what happened," Capps said after the settlement was signed. She said her medical problems had no effect on her job performance at the time. "I was being a good lawyer."

Capps was one of four assistant attorneys-general who lost a $17.8 million verdict in Pierce County in a case involving three developmentally disabled men who were abused while in a state-licensed adult family home. The case was named after lead plaintiff Damon Beckman.

The state missed a crucial deadline to appeal the Beckman verdict because key documents sat in the Attorney General's Office untouched for nearly two months. Capps was blamed and lost her job. At least two other employees were disciplined.

Defense of Capps' lawsuit and other actions have cost the state $850,000, not including the settlement, according to spokesman Gary Larson of the Attorney General's Office.

Tim Zenk, who manages Gregoire's gubernatorial campaign, called the settlement a "tremendous boost for Chris' campaign."

"I know that Chris' opponents had pinned their hope of winning the election on Chris losing in the courtroom," Zenk said.

Tim Hatley, who runs the campaign for King County Executive Ron Sims, Gregoire's opponent in the Democratic primary, responded by wondering how a payout of hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayers' money to settle a suit in favor of the plaintiff is a 'boost to her campaign.' "

Earlier this year, Sims' campaign provided documents to The Seattle Times, some of which were available in court files, that indicated Gregoire's office had influenced a probe of the missed appeal to focus the blame on Capps and downplay broad managerial problems in the office's Torts Division.

The settlement was negotiated over the past two days. The case had been headed for trial next week.

Gregoire was in court yesterday and approached Capps after U.S. District Judge Thomas Zilly signed the settlement. Gregoire shook Capps' hand and told her, "God bless you."

A few minutes later, outside the Seattle federal courthouse, Capps called Gregoire's courtroom conciliation a "photo op" and said she was "surprised that she didn't wait until we got down here" where the TV cameras were set up.

Still, Suzanne Thomas, Capps' attorney, praised the state for cobbling together a settlement for her client that "recognized and confirmed in so many ways that Jan did not act intentionally and did not do anything wrong." Thomas called it a "complete name clearing" for her client.

Since the discovery of the missed appeal in April 2000, the state has maintained that key documents sat in Capps' office while the deadline passed. They predicated that belief on a paralegal's sworn statement that she placed the documents in Capps' in-box.

Recently uncovered documents, however, indicated the paralegal's statement was misleading. The paralegal had informed key individuals in Gregoire's office at the time that she could not recall whether she put the documents in Capps' in-box.

Anne Bremner, Gregoire's lawyer, said the deal amounts to a "nuisance-value settlement" that recognized only that Capps may have been suffering from a medical condition that helped explain her job performance.

"We were ready and looking forward to trying this case," she said. "Chris Gregoire and all of the state's witnesses were ready and anxious to testify."

Mike Carter: 206-464-3706 or mcarter@seattletimes.com

Seattle Times staff reporter Ralph Thomas contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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