Attorneys Suing Over McDade Shooting Report Seek $123,000 in Fees From City

The attorneys suing the City of Pasadena over release of the McDade shooting report Monday filed a motion seeking more than $123, 000 in attorneys’ fees and costs from the City for their prosecution of claims against the City for initially refusing to release the report.

Gronemeier & Associates attorneys Elbie J. Hickambottom and Dale Gronemeier have represented Kendric McDade’s mother Anya Slaughter, the Pasadena NAACP, ACT, the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance and ACLU activist Kris Ockershauser in Public Records Act litigation over the report.

When the Pasadena Police Officers Association (“PPOA”) sued the City over the report, the City relied upon that lawsuit to avoid determining whether it would release the report to Gronemeier & Associates’ clients, who then intervened in the lawsuit on September 9, 2014, persuading the Court that the PPOA lawsuit was premature and that it should dissolve its temporary restraining order.

The City then indicated that it would release the report with 20% of it redacted, which the Judge ordered released despite PPOA objections. The PPOA has appealed the judgment; the hearing on its appeal is set for April 21.

The attorneys’ fees motion claims that Hickambottom and Gronemeier incurred more that $94,000 in fees at their hourly rates prosecuting the suit.  The motion seeks a $27,000 premium for the attorneys’ work up through September 9.

“Whatever the Court awards will not go into Skip Hickambottom’s or my pocket. Rather, we will donate the money to our clients and other organizations fighting to reform the Pasadena Police Department,” Dale Gronemeir said in a press release.

Gronemeier’s law firm says it has a record of pro bono legal work and donating proceeds to community organizations. When Gronemeier was lead attorney in the 1979-1983 lawsuit challenging Pasadena’s at-large election system as being race and wealth-discriminatory, the majority of a $300,000 attorneys’ fee award reportedly went to the ACLU, El Centro De Accion Social, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the Pasadena Minority History Foundation.

In 1989, Gronemeier’s firm received a $400,000 plus attorneys’ fees settlement from the Plaza Pasadena’s owner for the firm’s successful prosecution of shopping center access petitioning and free speech rights at the Plaza Pasadena; the Gronemeier firm says it donated $20,000 of it to KPAS for public affairs programming and $20,000 to fund voter registration in Northwest Pasadena.