Oakland Tribune

County pays mom $400,000 for boys' removal without warrant Deal could change how social workers treat cases
By Donna Horowitz
Staff Writer

Wednesday, July 10, 2002 - The Alameda County Board of Supervisors agreed to pay a Berkeley mother $400,000 and change its policies to settle her suit that charged the county removed her twin sons from her home without a warrant.

The settlement with Patricia Moodian, one of two approved in closed session Tuesday, was announced by County Counsel Richard Winnie.

The deal with Moodian means county social workers will have to change the way they handle such cases in the future, and it could pave the way for similar policy changes in other counties, said Moodian's Berkeley attorney, David Beauvais.

"The county has agreed to a consent decree that would prohibit these warrantless intrusions and removals of children," Beauvais said.

"The county can't remove children without warrants unless there's imminent danger of serious physical harm or death," he said.

A stipulated agreement

He anticipates the consent decree, essentially a stipulated agreement reached by both sides, will come before U.S. District Court Magistrate Bernard Zimmerman for approval within the next week or two.

Last month, Zimmerman ruled that a county social worker violated Moodian and her son's constitutional rights by removing the boys from their home in June 2001, without a warrant, for alleged emotional abuse.

He said state law allows children to be taken from their parents without prior judicial approval if the social worker believes the child is in imminent danger, but noted that emotional harm "does not carry the same immediacy."

This was the second time the county removed the boys from their mother. Social workers also removed them from their home in April 2000.

Both times they were returned to their mother.

"This is an emerging area of the law," Winnie said. "The social worker felt it was justified, but the court felt she required a warrant in such circumstances."

Winnie said the boys, now both 11, also have a malpractice case against their public defender, Kathy Siegel, which is pending. That lawsuit claims Siegel and her office was negligent in the way they represented the boys, saying she "advocated against them in the proceedings." The boys eventually fired her.

Interest-bearing trust

Siegel was not available for comment.

Beauvais said the family will divide up the settlement and the boys' share will go into an interest-bearing trust account, which they will get when they turn 18.

Winnie said about half of the settlement will go for attorneys fees.

County Social Services Agency spokeswoman Sylvia Myles said she didn't know how the decision would affect the way social workers handle such cases until "we get direction from the county counsel. We expect something coming down the pike very soon."

In another case, Winnie reported the county had reached a $350,000 settlement with the estate of a man who hanged himself with a towel in the North County Jail in Oakland in August 1999. Charles Bajalia of San Francisco had been picked up by the U.S. Marshal's Service for being a felon in possession of firearms.

The county will pay $137,000 of the settlement; Prison Health Services, a company that runs the county's health program in the jail, will pay another $137,000 and the U.S. Marshal's Service will contribute $75,000, Winnie said.