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CRLA - Study and Evaluation of CRLA by California OEO, 1971 - Condensation (2 of 2)
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CRLA - Study and Evaluation of CRLA by California OEO, 1971 - Condensation (2 of 2)
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Ronald Reagan Presidential Library
Digital Library Collections
This is a PDF of a folder from our textual collections.
Collection: Reagan, Ronald: Gubernatorial Papers,
1966-74: Press Unit
Folder Title: CRLA - Study and Evaluation of CRLA
by California OEO, 1971 - Condensation
(2 of 2)
Box: P29
To see more digitized collections visit:
https://reaganlibrary.gov/archives/digital-library
To see all Ronald Reagan Presidential Library inventories visit:
https://reaganlibrary.gov/document-collection
Contact a reference archivist at: [email protected]
Citation Guidelines: https://reaganlibrary.gov/citing
National Archives Catalogue: https://catalog.archives.gov/
A STUDY AND EVALUATION
OF
CALIFORNIA RURAL LEGAL ASSISTANCE, INC.
BY
CALIFORNIA OFFICE OF ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY
1971
LEWIS K. UHLER, DIRECTOR
SUMMARY
Governor Ronald Reagan has recommended the veto
of California Rural Legal Assistance, Inc. (CRLA), a Fed-
erally-funded legal assistance program intended to render
civil legal services to the poor in rural California
counties.
A 283-page evaluation report, based on almost
9,000 pages of referenced material and documentation,
was made public during the first week of January, 1971,
after its delivery to OEO officials in Washington, D. C.
The evaluation report is the work product of the Office
of Economic Opportunity of the State of California - its
Director and its staff. Governor Reagan's veto was based
on the extensive findings of this evaluation report.
CRLA is one of the largest publicly-financed
legal service programs in the United States. It is struc-
tured as a California non-profit corporation, funded by an
OEO grant. CRLA functions from nine operational offices,
a central administrative office in San Francisco and an
office involved in legislative advocacy in Sacramento.
The evaluation report is a voluminous catalogue
of violations of CRLA's grant conditions, examples of poor
quality legal service rendered and instances of political
zealousness on the part of CRLA personnel, who super-
impose an activist far Left philosophy over their profes-
sional and personal relationship to the rural communities
that they are intended to serve.
One section of the evaluation report details
"a dangerous thrust on the part of CRLA and its attendant,
cooperative 'movement lawyers' into the affairs of our
(California's) penal system."
Two murder cases are currently pending against
Black inmates at Soledad for the murder of Caucasian guards
the celebrated Soledad Soul Brothers' case and the
Soledad Seven case. The evaluation report, through affi-
davits taken at Soledad, shows the accelerated involvement
of CRLA attorneys at the prison installation since the
murders and even includes an affidavit of an inmate (who
is witness for the State in the "Soledad Soul Brothers
case), stating a CRLA attorney "threatened the inmate and
-2-
suggested that the inmate, at best, suppress evidence
and, at worst, commit perjury at the murder trial."
CRLA has filed a series of unorthodox and pre-
posterous law suits, including a civil action alleging
conspiracy to commit murder, alleging guards attempted
to coerce inmates to murder other inmates to gain a
voice in the formulation of internal prison policy at
Soledad. In the civil case for the conspiracy to commit
murder, the report on CRLA states:
"CRLA personnel had visited both the
alleged victims of the purported con-
spiracy, as well as those who were
supposed to commit the murders. It
is truly a most astonishing situation
for any attorney or law firm to be
consulting with the conspiratorial
murderer and the alleged victim at
one and the same time."
In another section of the report, CRLA, its
attorneys and personnel, are accused of fomenting school
demonstrations.
An affidavit from a school official in Marys-
ville, California, relates his conversation with a CRLA
attorney:
Hearing several friendly convers-
ations on National, State and local
political issues (the CRLA attorney)
has indicated to me that nothing short
of a radical change in the established
-3-
governing procedures would remedy
the ills of National, State and
local government. He informed me
that he was one of the first student
radicals at University of California,
Berkeley campus, and that he worked
actively and closely with Mario Savio
in the fifties."
This same attorney was a contributing editor
of an underground newspaper published at the Marysville
CRLA office, which, among other things, called the At-
torney General of the United States "Pig Mitchell.
In Modesto, California, CRLA attorneys dili-
gently directed the beginning of a school demonstration
against the Modesto Unified School District over a con-
troversy relative to the free lunch program. They dir-
ected the demonstration from the streets and carried
through by defending the demonstrators in court.
In all, the report, through affidavits and dir-
ect testimony, details nine separate instances of school
demonstrations and violence in which CRLA attorneys and
personnel helped to foment, continue and, ultimately,
defend the demonstrators, despite their grant prohibition
from handling criminal cases.
In Imperial County, at El Centro, CRLA attorneys
and personnel transported 94 high school students (some
-4-
of them juveniles) to a "Free Cesar Chavez demonstration
in the City of El Centro, without consent of the children's
parents or the school.
In Delano, a CRLA attorney attempted to inject
non-student Brown Beret agitators in the internal affairs
of the Delano school system leading to demonstrations that
reached proportions of violence.
Another case detailed how a CRLA attorney used
vile and obscene language on a high school panel to the
chagrin of the faculty involved in the seminar. He cul-
minated his activities before that junior high school class
by writing "F*CK VIETNAM on the blackboard.
The report states:
'Our evaluation reveals very disturb-
ing evidence that CRLA and individual
CRLA attorneys have acted and are act-
ing as catalytic agents in school agit-
ation incidents. Their actions have
been direct and vigorous in helping to
foment serious student harassment of
school authorities, assault on school
discipline, and the orderly conduct
of the local schools.
"We've learned a lot from the Black
Panthers; it's time for a White Pan-
ther Party
We have to find a cause
of action: we have to start -- the
revolution is coming,'
one CRLA attorney is quoted in the Marysville, California,
Appeal Democrat.
-5-
Even though CRLA is prohibited from representing
labor unions, their involvement with Cesar Chavez' United
Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC) is obvious from
the incidents related in the report.
CRLA's actions on behalf of Chavez' UFWOC are
apparently organized along two lines:
(1) to put the Farm Labor Service Bureau of
the State of California out of business; and
(2) to harass private farm labor contractors
to the extent that their business enterprise will be un-
profitable.
The report states,
"
The termination of Farm Labor
Services would appear at best a folly
and at worst disastrous. Without con-
veniently located centers through which
they could find available farm work, it
would appear that farm workers would be
severely harmed and would have to re-
turn to their own devices for work oppor-
tunities. 11
The dream of CRLA and UFWOC is that these State service
centers would be replaced by Chavez' closed shop farm
workers union.
In many areas of California, individuals known
as farm labor contractors perform the function of provid-
ing farm laborers for individual farmers.
-6-
Ordinarily, the farm labor contractor operates
as an independent contractor, arranging with the farmer
on a fixed fee contract or a percentage basis in excess
of the actual farm labor dollars involved. For this the
farm labor contractors often provide living facilities,
transportation and other services for the farm workers.
CRLA has entered lawsuits against private farm
contractors to harass them out of business, thus "greasing
the skids for Chavez' union monopoly.
The report shows a further close association
between CRLA and UFWOC. CRLA's original board of trustees
included four members who were either directly connected
with UFWOC or closely associated with its work. They are:
Cesar Chavez, President of UFWOC; Oscar Gonzales, President
of the United Farm Workers of San Jose; Larry Itliong of
the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee; and Miss
Kathryn Peake, Vice Chairman of the Emergency Committee to
Aid Farm Workers. Jerry Cohen, now general counsel of
UFWOC, was formerly employed by CRLA's McFarland office.
Charles Farnsworth, one of Cohen's partners and active in
UFWOC matters, worked in CRLA's El Centro office. Another
partner, David Averbuck, came from CRLA's Marysville office.
Gilbert Flores, alias Baby Huey, is both a community
worker for CRLA's McFarland office and a personal bodyguard
-7-
for UFWOC's leader, Cesar Chavez.
The report states:
"It now appears that CRLA's conduct
with respect to agriculture in Cal-
ifornia does not consist of simply
isolated actions in cases helping
individual poor farm workers and
their families with their problems.
There is, in fact, a grand strategy
which, until one has an opportunity
to view the scene from a statewide
perspective, is only a concealed
agenda."
The report further accuses CRLA of:
(1) assistance to UFWOC activists - pickets,
demonstrators and organizers;
(2) actively working to destroy the major ob-
stacles in its path, which are the Farm Labor Service of
California and farm labor contractors who operate through-
out the State.
CRLA, by its grant contract, is prohibited from
handling criminal cases.
The report includes an affidavit from a past
employee of CRLA's Salinas office, which states:
Cases were accepted for clients
charged with criminal offenses, par-
ticularly after Attorney Bill Daniels
transferred from the Marysville office
"
An affidavit from a judge in Yuba City states,
in part:
-8-
During the last year, 1970, there
has been at least five criminal cases
that have come before me in which the
defendant was represented by CRLA
attorneys
"
The District Attorney of Santa Barbara County
provided the evaluators with four specific criminal cases
with CRLA attorneys as attorneys of record.
The District Attorney of Sutter County indicates
that he has given up objecting to representation of crim-
inals by CRLA attorneys. Several district attorneys have
shifted the focus of their concern about CRLA's represent-
ation of criminal defendants from concern about violations
of CRLA's grant conditions to the quality of representation
that the criminal defendants are receiving from CRLA attorneys.
When the fact that CRLA attorneys are representing
clients in criminal actions is brought to the attention of
the management of CRLA in San Francisco, the Central Office
inevitably responds by saying that the erring attorney
has provided representation on his own time, at his own
expense, and without charging a fee.
"
In response to this claim, one district attorney
declared,
"This is ridiculous
to say that an
attorney working for a corporate law
firm may take on clients which are
prohibited to him during the regular
working day. To follow this to its
logical conclusion, then a district
attorney might well represent a lucra-
tive personal injury case or a rich
criminal defendant on 'days off'. "
-9-
The report accuses CRLA of flaunting eligibility
standards for free legal service and accepting cases be-
cause of personal value judgments often made for political
reasons.
In the eligibility section of the report, one
case discussed is a lawsuit against the Registrar of Voters
in Monterey County by a couple whose assets are in excess
of $100,000. The report states:
"Causes are considered by CRLA attor-
neys more often than guidelines. There
seems to be a total disregard for assess-
ing economic eligibility guidelines as
set out clearly in CRLA's grant contract.
"There is no doubt in our minds that
cases are accepted that tend to reflect
the dramatic, the political and tend to
conform with the cause in vogue of the
individual CRLA office involved."
The report further documents activities of CRLA
in soliciting clients and stirring up litigation.
In one instance reported, CRLA attorneys let it
be known that they were "looking for a woman on welfare"
to initiate a suit against the Madera County District
Attorney's Office, because it was alleged that polygraph
examinations were given to Welfare recipients to deter-
mine the truth.
-10-
Another instance is related in which a CRLA
attorney solicited clients in a newspaper article that
stated CRLA "needs a class suit to work with a group of
people to bring an action." This incident occurred in
the El Centro office, when CRLA decided to take action
against feed lots in the Calexico area.
In Modesto, during the school dissentions and
confrontations, CRLA attorneys told students in advance
that they would represent them in court if they were ar-
rested, as was also recorded in San Benito County.
In Salinas, during the news description of a
UFWOC rally, the news commentator stated:
"California Rural Legal Assistance
Attorney Neil Levy asks that all
workers return summonses from growers
notifying them to leave the camp, SO
that they can be answered in court,
adding that in that way he may be
able to prolong the day of eviction.
There are also cases in which the report states
that CRLA conscripts plaintiffs." On several occasions
farm workers were told that they were "signing a petition"
when, in fact, they were signing a lawsuit against a gov-
ernment agency.
In her affidavit, a former CRLA employee states:
-11-
Many cases were established as a re-
sult of manufactured situations. I
mean by this that clients or potential
clients were instructed in certain ac-
tions and dialogue with agencies and
private firms that would lead to liti-
gation."
A case is cited in which CRLA attorneys used
the name of the President of the Imperial County Medical
Association in a telegram to HEW to accelerate the open-
ing of the Migrant Health Clinic in Brawley, California.
The use of this doctor's name was totally without author-
ization.
Mr. Frank C. Bozzo, Department of Farm Labor,
at a San Benito County Board of Supervisors special
meeting, stated the following relative to CRLA's involve-
ment in this meeting:
As I was leaving my seat and walking
to the door of the chambers, Antonio
Del Buono, community worker for Calif-
ornia Rural Legal Assistance, shouted
that he wanted to talk to me, the man
from the Labor Department, as he put it.
I stated that I did not have anything to
talk to him about. He replied that he
had plenty to talk to me about
While
proceeding to walk away from and out of
the door, he shoulted 'On July 22nd we're
going to close all the Farm Labor offices
in the State. He did not elaborate who
'we' were, but I presume he was referr-
ing to CRLA. I told him not to bother
me anymore, and that I did not have
anything to discuss with him. Again I
repeated that we have a legal staff
that represented the Department in the
main hearings and who I thought had done
a good job of it. At this point, a Maria
Martinez Rivera, who had been in the aud-
ience at the meeting, overheard my last
comment to Mr. Del Buono. She intervened
by making this statement, 'Good, I'm glad
you're telling him (Del Buono) off.' When
he heard this remark he turned around
and started to shout to her in Spanish.
Several Mexican-American men who were
nearby jumped to her rescue and the police
were called. The evening ended with Mrs.
Rivera signing a complaint against Mr.
Del Buono for using vulgar and profane
language in her presence
In Madera County, CRLA attorneys drafted a
trust agreement for a female Welfare recipient that put
the proceeds of the sale of property into the kind of a
trust that would make it possible for her not to report
these proceeds to the local Welfare agency.
The report states:
We have no record of any official
punitive CRLA action concerning in-
cidents of the professional behavior
of individual CRLA attorneys or
staff members."
The report further states that one of the prin-
cipal tools of CRLA is harassment. Because CRLA has un-
told legal power at its disposal and a staff of lawyers
with nothing to do but "think up lawsuits," they can file
legal actions on questionable merit that would never be
filed by a person paying for legal service. In this way,
-13-
especially in unlawful detainer actions, CRLA can harass
individuals, companies and public agencies with no regard
for the cost of legal services incurred.
"One thing about CRLA attorneys is they
have no regard for the use of time or
the cost of legal services."
The report states:
In our evaluation, in case after case,
there seems to be an immediacy and fin-
ality in the modus operandi of CRLA at-
torneys in lieu of reason, negotiation and
calculation. They are prone to sue, seek
injunctive actions, as in the vernacular
'do their thing, without due respect to
the disciplined manner of thought process
that is so vitally important to the prac-
tice of law.
In commenting on their lobbying office in Sacra-
mento, the report states:
It is abundantly clear that this office
not only generates new legislation, but
lobbies extensively on behalf of its own
legislative programs and those of others
it considers appropriate. During the 1970
session of the Legislature, James F. Smith,
CRLA lobbyist, successfully opposed cer-
tain amendments to the State Welfare laws
that would have reduced the cost of Welfare
to the State.
"Although lobbying is not specifically
proscribed in the CRLA grant or OEO legal
guidelines, neither is it explicitly au-
thorized.
It is time that Congress and/or National
OEO clarifies this area of activity. The
lobbying question is a very close bedfellow
of the 'suit against the government' activ-
ity. Clearly it is time that policy decisions
were made regarding these activities.
-14-
The report also accuses CRLA of handling fee -
generating cases (even though it is prohibited from handling
such cases by terms of its grant) and cites the following
examples:
A case of police beating and false imprisonment -
$125,000; unlawful detention in violation of civil rights -
$423,000 general and punitive damages; infliction of cor-
poral punishment upon a school child - $39,600 general and
punitive damages; a claim of illegal firing for union ac-
tivity - over $500,000 general and punitive damages; false
arrest and police brutality case claiming $40,000 damages;
a claim of personal injuries in the counterclaim to an un-
lawful detainer action - $20,000 damages; a personal injury
action against the City of Delano - claim of $100,000 gen-
eral damages; an action against the City of Delano and its
police officers - a claim of $11,000 in exemplary and gen-
eral damages; a charge of injuries sustained due to an
unlawful dismissal by the City of Delano - $5,000 damages.
CRLA, in the voluminous evaluation report, is
accused of "institutional and structural defects beyond
repair. #
According to the report, CRLA is:
"constituted at odds with OEO's pre-
vailing premise. CRLA has had the
problems it has, substantially be-
cause its organization ignored the
rest of OEO's experience - which has
demonstrated the value of community
participation and home rule."
-15-
The report emphasizes the lack of community
participation displayed by CRLA - with local bar associ-
ations, the community structure and the citizens of the
community.
The report states:
We were startled when we went out into
these communities and watched CRLA try
to relate to the communities."
In most of its service areas, CRLA is
the largest office in the town, with
probably the only law firm Xerox machine.
In virtually every case, CRLA moved into
town and began making demands on everyone
with whom they had any contact: judges,
the local district attorney, welfare de-
partment, farm labor burea, and so on.
Often they dress in blue jeans, even in
court, and sometimes without shoes.
"They typically become involved in school
activities, in which they encourage high
school students to prosecute legal claims
based on a constitutional right of a stu-
dent to be immune from reasonable school
disciplinary procedures. In their re-
lations with children, often they act as
if they were above the law, indifferent
to thw siehes of the children's parents,
where the children may be useful to them
in pursuing a 'cause' that they may think
is important. Usually it relates to their
general assault on authority and discipline.
CRLA's impact on the poor themselves was subject
to the greatest concern, according to the evaluation report.
Cases are documented in which CRLA attorneys openly state
-16-
they will not handle domestic relations cases and seem
out of patience and indifferent to what the evaluators
consider were "legitimate needs of the rural poor. "
The evaluation suggests the need for a better
rural assistance program that is oriented to the needs
of the community and to the rural poor in those commun-
ities. The report states:
This Administration's deep concern
for meeting the legitimate civil legal
needs of indigents has prompted us to
devise a privately financed alternative
to CRLA which holds enormous promise to
truly serving the rural poor.
The program, according to the evaluation, intends
to create variations in the structure of each individual
office of the legal program through which it can be deter-
mined the most effective way, as well as the most efficient
way, to meet the legal needs of the area. The program in
depth will be announced before the end of January, when OEO
in Washington must make the decision whether to override or
sustain Governor Reagan's veto.
-17-
A STUDY AND EVALUATION
OF
CALIFORNIA RURAL LEGAL ASSISTANCE, INC.
BY
CALIFORNIA OFFICE OF ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY
1971
LEWIS K. UHLER, DIRECTOR
SUMMARY
Governor Ronald Reagan has recommended the veto
of California Rural Legal Assistance, Inc. (CRLA), a Fed-
erally-funded legal assistance program intended to render
civil legal services to the poor in rural California
counties.
A 283-page evaluation report, based on almost
9,000 pages of referenced material and documentation,
was made public during the first week of January, 1971,
after its delivery to OEO officials in Washington, D. C.
The evaluation report is the work product of the Office
of Economic Opportunity of the State of California - its
Director and its staff. Governor Reagan's veto was based
on the extensive findings of this evaluation report.
CRLA is one of the largest publicly-financed
legal service programs in the United States. It is struc-
tured as a California non-profit corporation, funded by an
OEO grant. CRLA functions from nine operational offices,
a central administrative office in San Francisco and an
office involved in legislative advocacy in Sacramento.
The evaluation report is a voluminous catalogue
of violations of CRLA's grant conditions, examples of poor
quality legal service rendered and instances of political
zealousness on the part of CRLA personnel, who super-
impose an activist far Left philosophy over their profes-
sional and personal relationship to the rural communities
that they are intended to serve.
One section of the evaluation report details
"a dangerous thrust on the part of CRLA and its attendant,
cooperative 'movement lawyers' into the affairs of our
(California's) penal system."
Two murder cases are currently pending against
Black inmates at Soledad for the murder of Caucasian guards
the celebrated Soledad Soul Brothers' case and the
Soledad Seven case. The evaluation report, through affi-
davits taken at Soledad, shows the accelerated involvement
of CRLA attorneys at the prison installation since the
murders and even includes an affidavit of an inmate (who
is witness for the State in the "Soledad Soul Brothers
case), stating a CRLA attorney "threatened the inmate and
-2-
suggested that the inmate, at best, suppress evidence
and, at worst, commit perjury at the murder trial."
CRLA has filed a series of unorthodox and pre-
posterous law suits, including a civil action alleging
conspiracy to commit murder, alleging guards attempted
to coerce inmates to murder other inmates to gain a
voice in the formulation of internal prison policy at
Soledad. In the civil case for the conspiracy to commit
murder, the report on CRLA states:
"CRLA personnel had visited both the
alleged victims of the purported con-
spiracy, as well as those who were
supposed to commit the murders. It
is truly a most astonishing situation
for any attorney or law firm to be
consulting with the conspiratorial
murderer and the alleged victim at
one and the same time.'
In another section of the report, CRLA, its
attorneys and personnel, are accused of fomenting school
demonstrations.
An affidavit from a school official in Marys-
ville, California, relates his conversation with a CRLA
attorney:
Hearing several friendly convers-
ations on National, State and local
political issues (the CRLA attorney)
has indicated to me that nothing short
of a radical change in the established
-3-
governing procedures would remedy
the ills of National, State and
local government. He informed me
that he was one of the first student
radicals at University of California,
Berkeley campus, and that he worked
actively and closely with Mario Savio
in the fifties."
This same attorney was a contributing editor
of an underground newspaper published at the Marysville
CRLA office, which, among other things, called the At-
torney General of the United States "Pig Mitchell.
In Modesto, California, CRLA attorneys dili-
gently directed the beginning of a school demonstration
against the Modesto Unified School District over a con-
troversy relative to the free lunch program. They dir-
ected the demonstration from the streets and carried
through by defending the demonstrators in court.
In all, the report, through affidavits and dir-
ect testimony, details nine separate instances of school
demonstrations and violence in which CRLA attorneys and
personnel helped to foment, continue and, ultimately,
defend the demonstrators, despite their grant prohibition
from handling criminal cases.
In Imperial County, at El Centro, CRLA attorneys
and personnel transported 94 high school students (some
-4-
of them juveniles) to a "Free Cesar Chavez demonstration
in the City of El Centro, without consent of the children's
parents or the school.
In Delano, a CRLA attorney attempted to inject
non-student Brown Beret agitators in the internal affairs
of the Delano school system leading to demonstrations that
reached proportions of violence.
Another case detailed how a CRLA attorney used
vile and obscene language on a high school panel to the
chagrin of the faculty involved in the seminar. He cul-
minated his activities before that junior high school class
by writing "F*CK VIETNAM on the blackboard.
The report states:
"Our evaluation reveals very disturb-
ing evidence that CRLA and individual
CRLA attorneys have acted and are act-
ing as catalytic agents in school agit-
ation incidents. Their actions have
been direct and vigorous in helping to
foment serious student harassment of
school authorities, assault on school
discipline, and the orderly conduct
of the local schools.
"We've learned a lot from the Black
Panthers; it's time for a White Pan-
ther Party
We have to find a cause
of action: we have to start -- the
revolution is coming,"
one CRLA attorney is quoted in the Marysville, California,
Appeal Democrat.
-5-
Even though CRLA is prohibited from representing
labor unions, their involvement with Cesar Chavez' United
Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC) is obvious from
the incidents related in the report.
CRLA's actions on behalf of Chavez' UFWOC are
apparently organized along two lines:
(1) to put the Farm Labor Service Bureau of
the State of California out of business; and
(2) to harass private farm labor contractors
to the extent that their business enterprise will be un-
profitable.
The report states,
11
The termination of Farm Labor
Services would appear at best a folly
and at worst disastrous. Without con-
veniently located centers through which
they could find available farm work, it
would appear that farm workers would be
severely harmed and would have to re-
turn to their own devices for work oppor-
tunities."
The dream of CRLA and UFWOC is that these State service
centers would be replaced by Chavez' closed shop farm
workers union.
In many areas of California, individuals known
as farm labor contractors perform the function of provid-
ing farm laborers for individual farmers.
-6-
Ordinarily, the farm labor contractor operates
as an independent contractor, arranging with the farmer
on a fixed fee contract or a percentage basis in excess
of the actual farm labor dollars involved. For this the
farm labor contractors often provide living facilities,
transportation and other services for the farm workers.
CRLA has entered lawsuits against private farm
contractors to harass them out of business, thus "greasing
the skids for Chavez' union monopoly.
The report shows a further close association
between CRLA and UFWOC. CRLA's original board of trustees
included four members who were either directly connected
with UFWOC or closely associated with its work. They are:
Cesar Chavez, President of UFWOC; Oscar Gonzales, President
of the United Farm Workers of San Jose; Larry Itliong of
the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee; and Miss
Kathryn Peake, Vice Chairman of the Emergency Committee to
Aid Farm Workers. Jerry Cohen, now general counsel of
UFWOC, was formerly employed by CRLA's McFarland office.
Charles Farnsworth, one of Cohen's partners and active in
UFWOC matters, worked in CRLA's El Centro office. Another
partner, David Averbuck, came from CRLA's Marysville office.
Gilbert Flores, alias Baby Huey, is both a community
worker for CRLA's McFarland office and a personal bodyguard
-7-
for UFWOC's leader, Cesar Chavez.
The report states:
"It now appears that CRLA's conduct
with respect to agriculture in Cal-
ifornia does not consist of simply
isolated actions in cases helping
individual poor farm workers and
their families with their problems.
There is, in fact, a grand strategy
which, until one has an opportunity
to view the scene from a statewide
perspective, is only a concealed
agenda."
The report further accuses CRLA of:
(1) assistance to UFWOC activists - pickets,
demonstrators and organizers;
(2) actively working to destroy the major ob-
stacles in its path, which are the Farm Labor Service of
California and farm labor contractors who operate through-
out the State.
CRLA, by its grant contract, is prohibited from
handling criminal cases.
The report includes an affidavit from a past
employee of CRLA's Salinas office, which states:
Cases were accepted for clients
charged with criminal offenses, par-
ticularly after Attorney Bill Daniels
transferred from the Marysville office
"
An affidavit from a judge in Yuba City states,
in part:
-8-
During the last year, 1970, there
has been at least five criminal cases
that have come before me in which the
defendant was represented by CRLA
attorneys
11
The District Attorney of Santa Barbara County
provided the evaluators with four specific criminal cases
with CRLA attorneys as attorneys of record.
The District Attorney of Sutter County indicates
that he has given up objecting to representation of crim-
inals by CRLA attorneys. Several district attorneys have
shifted the focus of their concern about CRLA's represent-
ation of criminal defendants from concern about violations
of CRLA's grant conditions to the quality of representation
that the criminal defendants are receiving from CRLA attorneys.
When the fact that CRLA attorneys are representing
clients in criminal actions is brought to the attention of
the management of CRLA in San Francisco, the Central Office
inevitably responds by saying that the erring attorney
has provided representation on his own time, at his own
expense, and without charging a fee.
11
In response to this claim, one district attorney
declared,
"This is ridiculous
to say that an
attorney working for a corporate law
firm may take on clients which are
prohibited to him during the regular
working day. To follow this to its
logical conclusion, then a district
attorney might well represent a lucra-
tive personal injury case or a rich
criminal defendant on 'days off 11
-9-
The report accuses CRLA of flaunting eligibility
standards for free legal service and accepting cases be-
cause of personal value judgments often made for political
reasons.
In the eligibility section of the report, one
case discussed is a lawsuit against the Registrar of Voters
in Monterey County by a couple whose assets are in excess
of $100,000. The report states:
"Causes are considered by CRLA attor-
neys more often than guidelines. There
seems to be a total disregard for assess-
ing economic eligibility guidelines as
set out clearly in CRLA's grant contract.
"There is no doubt in our minds that
cases are accepted that tend to reflect
the dramatic, the political and tend to
conform with the cause in vogue of the
individual CRLA office involved."
The report further documents activities of CRLA
in soliciting clients and stirring up litigation.
In one instance reported, CRLA attorneys let it
be known that they were "looking for a woman on welfare"
to initiate a suit against the Madera County District
Attorney's Office, because it was alleged that polygraph
examinations were given to Welfare recipients to deter-
mine the truth.
-10-
Another instance is related in which a CRLA
attorney solicited clients in a newspaper article that
stated CRLA "needs a class suit to work with a group of
people to bring an action." This incident occurred in
the El Centro office, when CRLA decided to take action
against feed lots in the Calexico area.
In Modesto, during the school dissentions and
confrontations, CRLA attorneys told students in advance
that they would represent them in court if they were ar-
rested, as was also recorded in San Benito County.
In Salinas, during the news description of a
UFWOC rally, the news commentator stated:
"California Rural Legal Assistance
Attorney Neil Levy asks that all
workers return summonses from growers
notifying them to leave the camp, so
that they can be answered in court,
adding that in that way he may be
able to prolong the day of eviction.
There are also cases in which the report states
that CRLA conscripts plaintiffs." On several occasions
farm workers were told that they were "signing a petition"
when, in fact, they were signing a lawsuit against a gov-
ernment agency.
In her affidavit, a former CRLA employee states:
-11-
Many cases were established as a re-
sult of manufactured situations. I
mean by this that clients or potential
clients were instructed in certain ac-
tions and dialogue with agencies and
private firms that would lead to liti-
gation.'
A case is cited in which CRLA attorneys used
the name of the President of the Imperial County Medical
Association in a telegram to HEW to accelerate the open-
ing of the Migrant Health Clinic in Brawley, California.
The use of this doctor's name was totally without author-
ization.
Mr. Frank C. Bozzo, Department of Farm Labor,
at a San Benito County Board of Supervisors special
meeting, stated the following relative to CRLA's involve-
ment in this meeting:
As I was leaving my seat and walking
to the door of the chambers, Antonio
Del Buono, community worker for Calif-
ornia Rural Legal Assistance, shouted
that he wanted to talk to me, the man
from the Labor Department, as he put it.
I stated that I did not have anything to
talk to him about. He replied that he
had plenty to talk to me about
While
proceeding to walk away from and out of
the door, he shoulted 'On July 22nd we're
going to close all the Farm Labor offices
in the State.' He did not elaborate who
'we' were, but I presume he was referr-
ing to CRLA. I told him not to bother
me anymore, and that I did not have
anything to discuss with him. Again I
repeated that we have a legal staff
-12-
that represented the Department in the
main hearings and who I thought had done
a good job of it. At this point, a Maria
Martinez Rivera, who had been in the aud-
ience at the meeting, overheard my last
comment to Mr. Del Buono. She intervened
by making this statement, 'Good, I'm glad
you're telling him (Del Buono) off. When
he heard this remark he turned around
and started to shout to her in Spanish.
Several Mexican-American men who were
nearby jumped to her rescue and the police
were called. The evening ended with Mrs.
Rivera signing a complaint against Mr.
Del Buono for using vulgar and profane
language in her presence
In Madera County, CRLA attorneys drafted a
trust agreement for a female Welfare recipient that put
the proceeds of the sale of property into the kind of a
trust that would make it possible for her not to report
these proceeds to the local Welfare agency.
The report states:
We have no record of any official
punitive CRLA action concerning in-
cidents of the professional behavior
of individual CRLA attorneys or
staff members."
The report further states that one of the prin-
cipal tools of CRLA is harassment. Because CRLA has un-
told legal power at its disposal and a staff of lawyers
with nothing to do but "think up lawsuits, they can file
legal actions on questionable merit that would never be
filed by a person paying for legal service. In this way,
-13-
especially in unlawful detainer actions, CRLA can harass
individuals, companies and public agencies with no regard
for the cost of legal services incurred.
"One thing about CRLA attorneys is they
have no regard for the use of time or
the cost of legal services."
The report states:
In our evaluation, in case after case,
there seems to be an immediacy and fin-
ality in the modus operandi of CRLA at-
torneys in lieu of reason, negotiation and
calculation. They are prone to sue, seek
injunctive actions, as in the vernacular
'do their thing, without due respect to
the disciplined manner of thought process
that is so vitally important to the prac-
tice of law.
In commenting on their lobbying office in Sacra-
mento, the report states:
It is abundantly clear that this office
not only generates new legislation, but
lobbies extensively on behalf of its own
legislative programs and those of others
it considers appropriate. During the 1970
session of the Legislature, James F. Smith,
CRLA lobbyist, successfully opposed cer-
tain amendments to the State Welfare laws
that would have reduced the cost of Welfare
to the State.
"Although lobbying is not specifically
proscribed in the CRLA grant or OEO legal
guidelines, neither is it explicitly au-
thorized.
It is time that Congress and/or National
OEO clarifies this area of activity. The
lobbying question is a very close bedfellow
of the 'suit against the government' activ-
ity. Clearly it is time that policy decisions
were made regarding these activities.
-14-
The report also accuses CRLA of handling fee -
generating cases (even though it is prohibited from handling
such cases by terms of its grant) and cites the following
examples:
A case of police beating and false imprisonment -
$125,000; unlawful detention in violation of civil rights -
$423,000 general and punitive damages; infliction of cor-
poral punishment upon a school child - $39,600 general and
punitive damages; a claim of illegal firing for union ac-
tivity - over $500,000 general and punitive damages; false
arrest and police brutality case claiming $40,000 damages;
a claim of personal injuries in the counterclaim to an un-
lawful detainer action - $20,000 damages; a personal injury
action against the City of Delano - claim of $100,000 gen-
eral damages; an action against the City of Delano and its
police officers - a claim of $11,000 in exemplary and gen-
eral damages; a charge of injuries sustained due to an
unlawful dismissal by the City of Delano - $5,000 damages.
CRLA, in the voluminous evaluation report, is
accused of "institutional and structural defects beyond
repair. "
According to the report, CRLA is:
"constituted at odds with OEO's pre-
vailing premise. CRLA has had the
problems it has, substantially be-
cause its organization ignored the
rest of OEO's experience - which has
demonstrated the value of community
participation and home rule."
-15-
The report emphasizes the lack of community
participation displayed by CRLA - with local bar associ-
ations, the community structure and the citizens of the
community.
The report states:
We were startled when we went out into
these communities and watched CRLA try
to relate to the communities.
In most of its service areas, CRLA is
the largest office in the town, with
probably the only law firm Xerox machine.
In virtually every case, CRLA moved into
town and began making demands on everyone
with whom they had any contact: judges,
the local district attorney, welfare de-
partment, farm labor burea, and so on.
Often they dress in blue jeans, even in
court, and sometimes without shoes.
"They typically become involved in school
activities, in which they encourage high
school students to prosecute legal claims
based on a constitutional right of a stu-
dent to be immune from reasonable school
disciplinary procedures. In their re-
lations with children, often they act as
if they were above the law, indifferent
to thw siehes of the children's parents,
where the children may be useful to them
in pursuing a 'cause' that they may think
is important. Usually it relates to their
general assault on authority and discipline.
CRLA's impact on the poor themselves was subject
to the greatest concern, according to the evaluation report.
Cases are documented in which CRLA attorneys openly state
-16-
they will not handle domestic relations cases and seem
out of patience and indifferent to what the evaluators
consider were "legitimate needs of the rural poor."
The evaluation suggests the need for a better
rural assistance program that is oriented to the needs
of the community and to the rural poor in those commun-
ities. The report states:
This Administration's deep concern
for meeting the legitimate civil legal
needs of indigents has prompted us to
devise a privately financed alternative
to CRLA which holds enormous promise to
truly serving the rural poor.
The program, according to the evaluation, intends
to create variations in the structure of each individual
office of the legal program through which it can be deter-
mined the most effective way, as well as the most efficient
way, to meet the legal needs of the area. The program in
depth will be announced before the end of January, when OEO
in Washington must make the decision whether to override or
sustain Governor Reagan's veto.
-17-