Re: Stockton California Police 2.6 Million payout

[Greegor]

United States District Court, E.D. California. Dennis KELLER and
Crystal Keller, Plaintiffs, v. CITY OF STOCKTON, et al., Defendants.
No. CIV S-04-1325 LKK/DAD. July 20, 2006. David John Beauvais, Oakland,
CA, for Plaintiffs. Joseph Martin Quinn, III, Meyers, Nave, Riback,
Silver & Wilson, Oakland, CA, Shelley Lorene Green, City of Stockton,
City Attorney's Office, Daniel Carl Cederborg, Office of the County
Counsel, County of San Joaquin, Stockton, CA, for Defendants. ORDER
LAWRENCE K. KARLTON, Senior District Judge. I. FACTUAL BACKGROUND On
July 10, 2002, four-year-old Crystal Keller was taken from her day care
provider's house in Sacramento by Stockton Police Officers Kathryn
Henderson ("Henderson") and Ken Takeda ("Takeda") and placed at a
children's shelter in Stockton. [FN1] The removal was approved by
Henderson's supervisor, Stockton Police Sergeant Ken Praegitzer
("Praegitzer"). Trial Transcript ("TT") at 41:8- 9. No warrant was
obtained prior to removing Crystal. TT at 42:4-5. On July 9, 2004,
plaintiffs filed suit against the City of Stockton ("City"), the County
of San Joaquin, Child Protective Services worker Jose Romero, and
Officers Henderson and Praegitzer, alleging unreasonable seizure of
Crystal from the custody of her father. Suit was premised on 42 U.S.C.
§ 1983 and alleged violations of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments
to the U.S. Constitution. [FN2] Specifically, plaintiffs alleged that
defendants unreasonably seized Crystal and unlawfully interfered with
their parent-child relationship. Amend. Compl. at 4:23; TT at 426:4.
After a four-day trial, which ended on March 31, 2006, the jury found
that the City, Henderson, and Praegitzer violated the Kellers' civil
rights and awarded compensatory damages to Dennis Keller in the amount
of $100,000 and to Crystal Keller in the amount of $500,000. The jury
awarded punitive damages against Henderson and Praegitzer in the amount
of $1,000,000 for each plaintiff, for a total of $2,600,000 in damages.
Special Verdict, filed March 31, 2006. Defendants filed the present
motions on April 17, 2006.

[Greegor]

For that text previously posted:
http://capoliticalnews.com/discuss.php?id=680

http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/article.cfm?archiveDate=04-28-06&storyID=24001

David Beauvais: Defender of the First Amendment
By Riya Bhattacharjee (04-28-06)

David Beauvais loves the First Amendment.
And the more controversial the lawsuit surrounding it happens to be,
the better he says his chances are of winning it.

When two sidewalk chalk artists were arrested for vandalism in the
early 1990s after chalking political messages on a sidewalk in Berkeley
and Oakland, Beauvais came to their rescue.

He went on to defend both the cases on grounds of First Amendment
rights and they were subsequently settled for a total of $40,000.

Beauvais has also represented dozens of protesters arrested at
demonstrations. Of those charged, only one was convicted for simple
assault while two went to jury trials in Berkeley and won acquittals.
The other cases were all dismissed.

Born in New Jersey in 1952, Beauvais graduated from the American
University in Washington D.C. with a B.A. in political science in 1973
and went on to study law at the University of the Pacific's McGeorge
School of Law.

He began his practice in 1978 in Sacramento and later worked in Fresno,
Irvine, Berkeley, and Oakland.

"I remember being fascinated by law. I took up anything that walked
in through the door back then," he said.

Beauvais also served as judge pro tem of the juvenile court in Fresno
in the mid '80s.

Today, Beauvais dabbles in both civil rights as well as juvenile
dependency cases dealing with violations in the Child Protection
Services (CPS).

On March 31, a federal jury in Sacramento returned a verdict of $2.6
million against the City of Stockton for violating the constitutional
rights of Crystal Keller (aged 4 years in 2002, the year of the case)
and her father Dennis Keller of Fair Oaks, California, when they took
the child into police custody without a warrant.

Beauvais served as case counsel in the case which involved the Stockton
police receiving a complaint in July 2002 about how Crystal was being
abused in her mother's home where she was spending alternate weeks as
part of a joint custody agreement granted after her parents separation.


Officer Ernie Alverson of the Stockton Police responded to the
complaint by putting Crystal under her father's care and forwarding
his report to Sgt. Ken Praegitzer who assigned the case to Detective
Kathryn Henderson.

Two days later and just 72 hours short of her fifth birthday, Crystal
was removed from her father's care and placed under protective
custody by Henderson with approval from Praegitzer.

Detective Henderson's explanation for taking Crystal was that "the
father was in violation of the custody order by keeping Crystal when
the mother was supposed to have her."

Beauvais argued that "Henderson was not enforcing the custody order
by taking Crystal from both parents."

Instead, he suggested, "Henderson could have gotten an emergency
protective order to give the father full custody while the allegations
against the mother were investigated."

The jury ruled that since Crystal had been in no danger of physical
abuse in her father's care, a warrant should have been used to remove
her. The jury further ruled against the City of Stockton for "failing
to have a policy in place that protects children from lawless
seizures."

According to Beauvais, cases like this are not unusual.

"The City of Stockton does not tell its officers what it can do. But
it's not just Stockton. Children everywhere are often removed from
their parents without a warrant when one should be obtained. I found
out about this problem when I represented a Berkeley family in 2000. We
settled with Alameda County for $4000,000. Later, I discovered that
these illegal removals are pandemic and not just limited to Alameda
County."

Alameda County was forced to change its policy in 2000 after this
particular case and currently a child has to be in immediate danger of
bodily injury or death from his surroundings to be removed from his
parent's care without a warrant.

Beauvais stated that systemic corruption in the child welfare system
was a common occurrence.

"Social workers have impossible case loads and are often poorly
trained. Parents are often tricked or intimidated into agreeing to a
watered-down version of the petition filed against them," he said.
"Courts too often rubber-stamp CPS recommendations and hearings are
confidentially held. There is no public access and no media scrutiny.
Once in the system, parents are well on their way to losing their
parental rights. The system cracks down disproportionately on poor
people without resources to hire attorneys and experts to counter CPS.
Study after study has shown that poor people are no worse as parents
than those in other socioeconomic groups."

Beauvais also said that county agencies received payment for each child
they removed from the parents as well as bonuses from the federal
government for each child they managed to have adopted.

"Perverse federal funding incentives reward counties for removing
children unnecessarily from their homes. Social workers often turn out
to be creative writers of reports," he pointed out.

Beauvais spoke of a recent incident where the father had told the
social worker that he had smoked a joint with the mother on their first
date. Although there was not her evidence of drug use, the social
worker wrote in her report several paragraphs later that "both parents
have a history of using drugs."

Beauvais is currently involved in the "Heil Krohn" case where he
represents a homeless activist in Santa Cruz who was arrested at a
Santa Cruz city council meeting for making "a silent, fleeting Nazi
salute toward the mayor (Christopher Krohn) after the mayor interrupted
a speaker and cut off public comment."

Although the mayor did not notice the gesture another council member
did. "At that point my client was told to leave the meeting or be
arrested. He refused to leave and was arrested," Beauvais said.

Although a federal judge in San Francisco dismissed Beauvais's
client's federal civil rights action case for "false arrest and
violation of his first amendment rights," it was later reinstated by
the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The case is currently awaiting
trial.

When he's not fighting civil rights cases, Beauvais enjoys traveling
to third world countries-especially Central and South America. He
recently returned from Peru and Bolivia and said he can't wait to get
back to discover more about his latest interest-ancient rituals and
practices of shamanism in the Peruvian Amazon.


Photograph by Hans Barnum
http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/photos/04-28-06/weblawyer%2Ejpg
David Beauvais (left) with law student intern Steve De Caprio (right)
and office fashion trendsetter, Parker (center).