A very small, select number of attorneys make hundreds of thousands of dollars each year because they are appointed by family and juvenile court judges to be amicus attorneys representing children in private custody cases where the parties can afford to pay very large fees. The law that requires random appointment of lawyers for most positions (infamously called the "wheel") specifically does not apply to amicus attorneys or discovery masters. Each judge has the unfettered, and largely secret, ability to reward certain lawyers with these very lucrative appointments. There is no way to really track who gets these appointments, which judges make the appointments or how much the appointees are paid. Public transparency and accountability has been sorely lacking for years. Now the Harris County Family District Judges are requiring a new reporting form to bring transparency to this issue. I applaud the judges, but more is needed. In a case where wealthy parents are fighting over ... Read More >
My Letter to the District Attorney About Gary Polland
Reprinted from the November 14, 2014 Mongoose newsletter. Now that the election is over, I have written District Attorney Devon Anderson's Public Integrity Unit about Gary Polland. Similar letters send by me in the past led to the indictment of Judge Dupuy and the forced resignation of Judge Pratt. The actions of Mr. Polland are particularly important because of his influence with judges as the former Republican Party Chair, one of the "Big Three Endorsers" who dominate local GOP primaries and as a Houston television personality (on Channel 8 at least). This is what I wrote to the D.A.: I attach documents relating to attorney Gary Polland and what I contend are false pay vouchers he submitted to the county for work he did as a lawyer appointed on CPS cases. I believe that the crime of tampering with a government record may have been committed. I am providing you: 1. A legal article that establishes that a court appointed ad litem in a CPS case cannot bill the ... Read More >
Attorneys Cannot Bill Clients for Motions to Withdraw
A lawyer cannot bill her client for the time spent preparing a motion to withdraw from the client's case. Lee v. Daniels & Daniels, 264 S.W.3d 273, 278 (Tex. App.-San Antonio 2008, pet. denied). In that case, the attorney's engagement letter said the client would,"pay for all time spent, costs and expenses incident to withdrawal as attorney of record to include, but not limited to, airfare, mileage, motel, and lodging." The Court of Appeals held: Daniels [the attorney] sought reimbursement for all time spent in his efforts to terminate his attorney-client relationship with Cummings [the client] including time spent adversarial to his own client. None of that time was spent engaged in " legal services" performed or rendered on behalf of Cummings, his client. Instead, Daniels spent that time engaged in services performed for his own benefit. No lawyer could form a reasonable belief that time spent adversarial to the client and in pursuit of the lawyer's own interests is the ... Read More >
Franklin Resorts to the “Everyone Is Doing It” Defense
Reprinted from the October 7, 2014 Mongoose newsletter. I filed a criminal complaint against Judge Alicia Franklin and she is not saying "I didn't do it." Instead, she defends herself by saying,"Everybody does it." A Houston Chronicle article of September 21 started this way:A prominent line of defense has emerged for a newly appointed family court judge accused this month of false billing when she was working as a court-appointed lawyer representing abused children: Everybody does it. District Court Judge Alicia Franklin, the subject of a criminal complaint alleging she broke the law by billing for more than 24 hours of work in a single day as a court-appointed lawyer in Child Protective Services cases, has explained the high hours by saying she was billing for work done by associates and support staff. Click here to read the entire article, which also includes these quotes: "It [the statute on payment of CPS ad litem fees] sure does imply that it has to be ... Read More >
How Gary Polland Earns Million$ on CPS Appointments
Gary Polland was able to earn over $1.9 million in court appointments since 2010 using this simple strategy: get appointed a LOT and bill a LOT of hours every day. Polland's political clout in Republican primaries prompted Judges Devlin, Phillips, Schneider, Pratt, Millard and Lombardino to appoint Polland hundreds of times. Over 90% of Polland's apointments came from those judges. Once Polland got the appointments, he often billed more hours than a mere mortal could possibly work in a day. The following chart summarizes Polland's work on October 1, 2013. The hours Polland billed for CPS home visits are shown in one column and all other "out of court" hours he billed for that day are in the next column. Appointed attorneys are paid flat rates for court appearances and, on this day, Polland only had one court appearance. On this one day, Gary Polland billed for 30 hours of lawyer work and for one juvenile court appearance. Click here to see the actual invoices ... Read More >
Polland CPS Vouchers Reveal Amazing Billing
Reprinted from the September 16, 2014 Mongoose newsletter. I finally received the pay vouchers for just three months of billing by Gary Polland I am paying to have these vouchers analyzed (as I did with Alicia Franklin), but here is one startling finding I quickly made by looking through these vouchers: Gary Polland billed Harris County for four home visits totaling 19 hours on one single day and the gullible or complicit judges approved his vouchers and the county apparently paid him. In CPS cases, the law requires the attorney ad litem appointed to represent the child to personally visit the child at home before each court appearance. Polland, who almost always bills exactly 5.0 hours for "travel to and conduct home visit; draft report with pictures" billed the following for one day, August 10, 2013: Case No. 2013-04442J, 313th Juvenile District Court - 5.0 hours for a home visit (invoice submitted 8/15/13)(note the duplicate, "corrected" invoice also submitted). Case ... Read More >
The Defense Alicia Franklin Should Be Making
Reprinted from the September 16, 2014 Mongoose newsletter. The public relations flack Judge Franklin has hired (with either campaign funds or money she made on CPS cases), is not doing a very good job for her. It does not really help Franklin to tell her to lay low and say nothing while the PR firm tells the press that my 100% provable facts are just a "political smear." Here is what Franklin's spokesperson would be saying if I were Franklin's media and political advisor: First of all, it is a shame you are not looking into the hard work Judge Franklin is doing every day in her courtroom to provide justice to families and children. She took on a court that was devastated by her predecessor's incompetence and she has already done a mountain of work to close out cases and correct errors Judge Pratt made. I suggest you sit for a few hours in Judge Franklin's courtroom and decide for yourself what her dedication to justice and the law is. The issues Greg Enos has raised about ... Read More >
Is False Billing on CPS Cases a Crime?
Reprinted from the September 16, 2014 Mongoose newsletter. There is no doubt that in some instances, a lawyer who falsely bills the county for court appointed work can be convicted and sent to prison. Last week, I was in an outlying county discussing this CPS billing scandal with some very good criminal attorneys. They were all amazed by the huge fees that are awarded to CPS attorneys in Harris County and they all agreed that what Alicia Franklin had done when she was billing as a CPS attorney was clearly totally wrong. Their debate was on the odds that Franklin could be convicted of a crime. They noted that the CPS pay vouchers do not specifically say that the attorney submitting the voucher was stating "under penalty of perjury" that only she did the work billed ... Read More >
“The Nail in the Coffin” for Attorneys Falsely Billing Harris County on CPS Cases
Reprinted from the September 16, 2014 Mongoose newsletter. This is perhaps the most important development in the CPS billing scandal reported in this newsletter because the false billers were claiming that there was nothing wrong with the appointed attorney billing for work done by another lawyer. A wise probate judge in Austin who reads The Mongoose e-mailed me about an appellate case that holds exactly what I have been saying: a lawyer appointed by a judge as an ad litem cannot and should not bill for work done by other attorneys (except in unusual circumstances and then only after informing the court). Let's see these "CPS appointment law firms" and mega-billers explain this: When a guardian ad litem is appointed, the trial court intends that appointed attorney to personally protect the minor's interests and to act as an officer of the court. Accordingly, it is generally not anticipated or reasonable for a guardian ad litem to delegate his ad litem responsibilities to ... Read More >
A Law Firm Policy on Fairly Billing Clients
This is a reprint from the September 9, 2014 Mongoose newsletter. Me and a lot of attorneys are looking at our own billing practices after my articles on the outrageous and apparently false billing in CPS cases by Alicia Franklin. One excellent family law attorney, with much more experience than me, sent this e-mail: I just had 3 grueling non stop days in the office - totaled my hours for those 3 days - 18.5. I must be doing something wrong. I know few attorneys who work harder than my own Christina Tillinger, and she averages about 7.25 hours billed per day unless there is a trial or long mediation. I usually bill fewer hours than that. I have written ten simple rules for honest billing that I have now adopted as my law firm's policy. Click here to read all ten rules. Here are a few of these ten rules: 2. Bill actual time spent and round up only a little. If you spend 3 minutes on a phone call, bill 0.10 instead of 0.25. If you literally were on the phone ... Read More >