OKDHS Cites Legal Fees to Defend Foster Care Suit

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Since February 2008, the Oklahoma Department of Human Services has been forced to spend $3,918,624 in attorney fees and $653,113.59 in expenses to defend itself against a class-action lawsuit over its foster care system.
“It’s unfortunate that funds have to be spent to defend the state against unmerited claims,” said Sheree Powell, OKDHS Coordinator of Communications. “As long as Children’s Rights continues making claims that lack merit, we must defend the state against them.”

The New York-based group Children’s Rights filed a lawsuit in federal court against the state over the care of children in its foster care system, adding to a long list of states around the country being targeted by the group.

“Defending the litigation is the least expensive alternative available to the state,” said Powell.

To settle the case would mean the state would have to enter into a consent decree. In other states where consent decrees have been entered into by Children’s Rights, it has cost those states hundreds of millions of dollars and many millions more in court-awarded attorney fees, with little to no improvement in outcomes for children. 

“Many states have been forced to enter into ill-considered consent decrees, to the detriment of both taxpayers and the children in their care, because they did not have the resources to defend themselves or respond to overwhelming discovery requests," said Powell.

“Consent decrees simply shift highly contentious litigation from issues of liability to issues of compliance, contempt and federal court receivership.”

OKDHS sought the legal services of Bob Nance to lead the state’s defense in this case.  Nance, who has served as Oklahoma assistant attorney general, has had extensive experience in representing the state in complex institutional-reform litigation in federal court having been involved in the three other major institutional reform cases:  Terry D.; Bobby Battles and Homeward Bound. Nance is a member of the Riggs, Abney, Neal, Turpen, Orbison and Lewis law firm.

The Riggs Abney law firm has billed a total of 25,507 hours and has discounted its bill by $542,516 since the inception of the lawsuit, reducing its effective hourly rate to $153 dollars per hour.

By contrast, Children’s Rights and their lawyers regularly seek attorney fees of $400 to $500 dollars per hour for senior attorneys.

Since 2008, 25 lawyers have entered appearances as attorneys of record for the plaintiff class.  At the time the lawsuit was filed, the Attorney General only had 15 attorneys in its litigation division and the OKDHS Legal Division had three attorneys primarily engaged in litigation.

In addition to attorney fees, OKDHS lawsuit expenses have included:

• Processing of more than 750 gigabytes of electronically stored information, or the amount of information that can be held in 350 million printed pages;
• Production and numbering of more than 5 million individually numbered pages requested by Children’s Rights in discovery; and 
• Retaining expert consultants and witnesses to analyze data and respond to the experts hired by Children’s Rights.

A growing consensus around the nation reflects that the approach adopted by Children’s Rights from its lawsuit against the District of Columbia to its 2008 consent decree in Michigan has not improved outcomes for children and penalize appropriate social work decisions.

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