In re CHARLISSE C.

Citation45 Cal.4th 145,84 Cal.Rptr.3d 597,194 P.3d 330
Decision Date30 October 2008
Docket NumberNo. S152822.,S152822.
CourtUnited States State Supreme Court (California)
PartiesIn re CHARLISSE C., a Person Coming Under the Juvenile Court Law. Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Shadonna C., Defendant and Respondent; Children's Law Center, Objector and Appellant.

OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE

Superior Court, Los Angeles County; Stanley Genser, Temporary Judge. *

Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, Rex S. Heinke and Seth M.M. Stodder, Los Angeles, for Objector and Appellant.

Raymond G. Fortner, Jr., County Counsel, and Peter Ferrera, Assistant County Counsel, for Plaintiff and Respondent.

John L. Dodd, Tustin, under appointment by the Supreme Court, for Defendant and Respondent.

John Cahill, Burbank, under appointment by the Supreme Court, for Minor.

William Wesley Patton, Costa Mesa, as amicus curiae.

CHIN, J.

We granted review in this case to determine whether the juvenile court correctly disqualified the Children's Law Center of Los Angeles (CLC) from representing Charlisse C., a minor, in this dependency action. CLC is a publicly funded, nonprofit law office that represents parties in the Los Angeles County Juvenile Dependency Court. It currently comprises three units: a core unit, known as Unit 1, and two conflict units, known as Units 2 and 3. Unit 3 undertook to represent Charlisse in this action, which arose when a juvenile dependency petition was filed under Welfare and Institutions Code section 300 1 alleging in part that Charlisse was at substantial risk of being abused or neglected due to the emotional and mental health problems of her mother, Shadonna C. Shadonna is a former client of CLC's Unit 1 (or its predecessor). Although finding no actual conflict of interest and no improper disclosure of confidential information, the juvenile court, citing Castro v. Los Angeles County Bd. of Supervisors (1991) 232 Cal.App.3d 1432, 284 Cal.Rptr. 154 ( Castro ) and People v. Christian (1996) 41 Cal.App.4th 986, 48 Cal.Rptr.2d 867 ( Christian ), found that an erosion of the ethical screens separating CLC's units created a structural conflict of interest warranting CLC's disqualification. In a divided decision, a majority of the Court of Appeal reversed the disqualification order. For reasons set forth below, we conclude the trial court applied the wrong legal standard in ordering CLC's disqualification and therefore abused its discretion. We remand the matter for further consideration in accordance with the standards this opinion sets forth.

Factual Background

On July 26, 2006, the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) filed a petition alleging that six-day-old Charlisse came within the juvenile court's jurisdiction for two reasons: (1) she was at substantial risk of suffering serious physical harm because the “emotional/mental health condition” of her 19-year-old mother, Shadonna, “at times ha[d] interfered with [Shadonna's] ability to provide regular care, supervision and a home” (see § 300, subd. (b)); and (2) Charlisse's sister, Donna, had been abused or neglected by Shadonna and there was substantial risk that Charlisse would also be abused or neglected (see § 300, subd. (j)). Regarding the latter allegation, the petition explained that Donna, who was born when Shadonna was 14 years old, is a former juvenile court dependent and that the dependency ended with Donna's adoption by her grandmother. A simultaneously filed detention report noted that Shadonna is “a former foster youth” with a “history of behavioral problems.”

At the detention hearing on July 26, 2006, the juvenile court appointed a CLC attorney to represent Charlisse. CLC is a publicly funded, nonprofit legal services organization that the County of Los Angeles created in 1989 to provide statutorily required legal representation to parents and children in the dependency court. 2 ( Castro, supra, 232 Cal.App.3d at p. 1436, 284 Cal.Rptr. 154.) It initially operated under a 1990 agreement with the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors (Board) requiring CLC to maintain a structure that enabled it to “represent as many as three separate parties in a dependency proceeding, even if they [had] conflicting interests.” ( Ibid.) The 1990 agreement also required CLC to follow specified operating rules and procedures, including the following: (1) CLC's staff attorneys had to “be organized into three separate offices of comparable quality,” each with “its own separate administrator” with “full case management authority over all cases assigned to that office”; (2) [e]ach office [had to] maintain separate case files,” and staff attorneys assigned to one office could not “ have access to the case files of [another] office”; (3) [a]ttorneys [could] not be transferred between offices”; and (4) CLC “corporate officers [could] promote, discipline, or dismiss a staff attorney only upon the recommendation of that attorney's office administrator.” In Castro, the Court of Appeal rejected the claim that CLC's separate offices could not represent separate parties with potentially adverse interests in a single dependency proceeding, reasoning in part that CLC had “been structured so its attorneys and its separate groups [had] no contact with one another,” and that its “ structures ... reinforce[d] the ethical duty of CLC's attorneys not to violate their clients' confidences or compromise their legal interests. ( Castro, supra, 232 Cal.App.3d at p. 1442, 284 Cal.Rptr. 154.)

In July 2005, CLC began providing legal services under an agreement with California's Administrative Office of the Courts. At about the same time, CLC reorganized its three offices into three litigation units: a “core” unit, known as Unit 1, and two “conflict” units, known as Units 2 and 3.

The CLC attorney the juvenile court appointed to represent Charlisse was with Unit 3. Shadonna, represented by a non-CLC attorney, objected to the appointment, asserting that she had been “a CLC client of [U]nit [1] when she was a child” and that a conflict of interest existed because, in light of CLC's structural changes, its three units were “operating as one firm.” The court, noting that it had appointed Unit 3, rather than Unit 1, to represent Charlisse, found no “factual conflict,” but left open the possibility that Shadonna could file a recusal motion and “make a record that, factually, the current structure of CLC violates” the structure Castro approved.

Three weeks later, Shadonna moved to disqualify CLC and Unit 3 from further representation of any party. In her moving papers, she asserted that she became a dependent child in December 2001 after her mother died, that CLC's Unit 1 represented her when she was a dependent child, that Unit 1 later represented her again as a parent when her first child was detained in June 2002, that she received reunification services through December 2003 in connection with her first child, and that her first child was adopted and jurisdiction was terminated in February 2005. 3 She then argued that because CLC's prior representation of her substantially related to CLC's current representation of Charlisse, disqualification was appropriate unless CLC showed that “it complie[d] with the structure set forth in Castro. She further argued that CLC's “current structure” did not comply with Castro, that [t]here ha[d] been no attempt to maintain ethical walls among [CLC's] three units,” and that the ability of CLC's administration “to dictate policy, hire, fire, set salaries, and interfere with the assignment of cases create[d] a de facto conflict of interest for every client with an adverse interest to another client within the organization.”

In support of her motion, Shadonna submitted declarations from Kenneth Sherman, Anne Fragasso, Allen Korenstein, and Angela Pierce di Donato, all former CLC employees. Sherman joined CLC in 1990 as a senior trial attorney and, in September 1997, became director of the office now known as Unit 2. He stated generally that after Miriam Krinsky became CLC's executive director in April 2002, she “repeatedly violated the ethical walls” separating CLC's units. 4 Specifically, he stated:

1. In January 2003, Krinsky tried to convince him, one of his attorneys, and one of his supervisors to “quash” a subpoena for a DCFS employee in a case Sherman's office was handling, because Krinsky was concerned “it would not look good if it appeared that [CLC] was not cooperating with” DCFS.

2. In early 2003, Krinsky asked fact-specific questions of an attorney in Sherman's office who was representing a dependent child. It was clear from the nature of the questions that Krinsky knew many of the facts of the case. Sherman later discovered that the head of Unit 1 represented a sibling with a conflicting interest.

3. In June 2003, “it was discovered” that Krinsky “surreptitiously had [CLC's] computer administrator put her email address on each of the intraoffice confidential emails of the three law firms. These intraoffice email lists were intended to be distribution lists for the staff within each office in order to ensure that there was no breach of confidentiality when information about cases was transmitted within the office.... When [Krinsky] was informed of the breach of confidentiality and how this act could endanger the viability of the corporation, she relented and permitted the three firms to maintain intraoffice confidential email address lists.”

4. In fall 2003, Krinsky imposed a policy requiring her approval before a Code of Civil Procedure section 170.6 affidavit of prejudice could be used on a “blanket” basis or in a “class of cases to disqualify a judicial officer. She suspended the policy about a year later when Sherman provided her with an opinion on the policy from an “ethics expert.”

5. In spring 2005, when an attorney left Sherman's office, Krinsky transferred one of the former attorney's cases to Unit 1. Krinsky felt it was not necessary...

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