Legal costs of bad arrest may grow

Last month, a federal jury in Seattle awarded $269,000 to a 22-year-old community volunteer who was roughed up and wrongly arrested by Seattle police.

But that's just the start of what the case could cost the city's taxpayers.

Romelle Bradford's attorney, Lem Howell, is asking a judge to order the city to pay him more than $271,000 in attorneys fees for prevailing in the civil-rights case. Howell billed 22 hours at $480 an hour — a total of $10,560 — just to figure out how much his fees are going to be.

Meantime, the Seattle City Attorney's Office says the private law firm contracted to defend the police, Stafford Frey Cooper, has billed more than $138,000 for the case and that amount is climbing — the trial attorney has asked the judge to reconsider the verdict and order a new trial, the first step toward challenging the award in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The potential tab so far tops more than $675,000, and the meter is running.

Federal law allows judges in civil-rights cases to award "reasonable attorney's fees" when a plaintiff succeeds at trial. Congress offered the award of fees in the Civil Rights Act as an impetus for attorneys to take on civil-rights cases, which often are difficult to prove and often involve plaintiffs who can't afford to hire lawyers on their own.

Attorneys who win civil-rights cases can also ask the trial judge to apply a "fee multiplier" in cases of "exceptional success." Howell wants his estimated fees of $174,321 multiplied one-and-a-half times.

Bradford was a 20-year-old volunteer at the Rainier Vista Boys & Girls Club in 2006 and was chaperoning a dance when rival groups began to make trouble.

Police were called, and Bradford, according to testimony and court records, was wearing a red staff T-shirt and identification when a rookie police officer, Jacob Briskey, ordered him to stop running toward the altercation.

Bradford, who testified he did not know the officer was speaking to him, continued on when the then-24-year-old officer knocked him hard to the ground and threatened to "knock him the [expletive] out" if he tried to get back up. Bradford was arrested and spent a night in jail.

No criminal charges were ever filed against him.

Moses Garcia, the attorney who represented the city, said Howell is asking for "an extraordinary amount of money — even more than his client will make." The city will challenge the requested fees as being extravagant, Garcia said.

Howell has included with his motion declarations from nine other attorneys who have litigated civil-rights cases against the city. All praise Howell's abilities and offer sworn statements about how difficult such cases are to win.

"I find the results in this case truly remarkable," wrote Seattle attorney Michael Withey, who in recent years negotiated a $1 million settlement from the city in a class-action lawsuit arising from arrests made in the 1999 WTO protests. Withey also obtained a $1.75 million settlement for the parents of a young man fatally beaten in a crowd during the 2001 Mardi Gras riots in Pioneer Square while officers looked on.

Attorney Fred Diamondstone, who settled a police assault case in November for $185,000 — up to that point, one of the largest settlements with the city in a police-misconduct case — wrote: "Unless attorneys who undertake risky civil rights cases are fairly and fully compensated for the time expended in these cases, the limited pool of lawyers willing to vindicate the rights of victims of government will shrink."

Howell said Bradford signed a standard contingency-fee contract promising the lawyer 40 percent of any money won in the case. That means Howell could claim $107,000 of the $268,000 jury award in addition to any fees awarded by the court.

Howell, however, said he plans to put any attorneys fees awarded by the court into a pot with the verdict and then take his contingency fee cut from that total. "What it means is that Mr. Bradford's award will increase by a percentage of my fees. That seems fair to me," Howell said.

So far, the city hasn't paid anything to anyone, and U.S. District Judge James Donohoe will hear arguments on the issue of attorneys fees July 1.

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