A former Los Angeles Police Department commander awarded $5.7 million by a jury in her retaliation suit was additionally granted more than $1.2 million in attorneys’ fees as the winning party in the case.
On Tuesday, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Theresa M. Traber granted former Cmdr. Nicole Mehringer $1.2 million in attorneys’ fees, a reduction from the $1.55 million requested by her lawyers, who in their court papers described in detail the work done by three attorneys and a paralegal on the case.
Mehringer was found passed out and drunk in a police vehicle that crashed into a parked car while she was accompanied by a subordinate in 2018 in Glendale. She contended that by being terminated, she was treated more harshly than male counterparts involved in similar situations while under the influence.
A jury deliberated for about 90 minutes before reaching its verdict on March 18 and their award included $3.75 million to compensate Mehringer for past and future loss of reputation and emotional distress
In her attorneys’ fees award, Traber said the Mehringer case was not a simple one for the plaintiff’s attorneys.
“The difficulty of the issues in this case was significant,” the judge wrote. “As plaintiff notes, her case proceeded along a narrow path, her strategy requiring her to forgo challenging the board’s decision to discipline her and focusing on her retaliation theory…”
Mehringer’s attorneys also filed several motions to obtain internal records evidence to substantiate her retaliation, a complicated maneuver which, in the end, was convincing to the jury, the judge further noted.
Traber also said she had to be “mindful” that taxpayers will pay the attorneys’ fees and so she used a “modest” multiplier, a tool which a judge can employ to increase or decrease attorneys’ fees, depending on such factors as the risk in handling a contingency case.
Mehringer’s lead attorney, Gregory Smith, is a “highly experienced” employment law attorney who has been practicing law for more than 35 years, and has been head lawyer in about 80 jury trials, according to the plaintiff’s attorneys’ court papers.
Mehringer had a contingency fee agreement with her attorneys as she was unemployed at the time and living off of modest pension payments that would not have been enough to pay her counsel on an hourly basis, the plaintiff’s court papers additionally stated.
A Board of Rights hearing concluded with Mehringer being found guilty of being drunk in a public place, allowing an intoxicated subordinate to operate the plaintiff’s city-owned vehicle as well as failing to cooperate with police during her arrest and booking, the suit stated.
Mehringer pleaded guilty to failing to disclose to the department that she was involved in a romantic relationship with a subordinate, the suit further stated.
In agreeing to represent Mehringer, her attorneys took the risk that the city could have won the case and not been compensated for all the hours they worked, according to their court papers.