What D.C. officials have acknowledged is a dangerous and deteriorating special education system has meant big paydays for the lawyers of James E. Brown & Associates.
Since 2001, D.C. has paid nearly $15.5 million to the law firm for representing parents who sue the city schools over the special education system, city records show.
The firm is by far the biggest player in the lucrative field of special education litigation. But others also profit. From fiscal 2001 until 2006, D.C. paid more than $52 million to private lawyers who sued the schools, city records show.
The Examiner has written extensively on D.C.’s crumbling special education system, where officials have thrown hundreds of millions of dollars at private schools with little regard to the safety or welfare of the children shipped there.
One of the schools, the Judge Rotenberg Center in Canton, Mass., was the subject of a scathing D.C. report last week, accusing Rotenberg officials of neglecting the children there. Nine out of the 10 D.C. children in Judge Rotenberg were Brown & Associates clients.
Brown & Associates manager Domiento C. Hill defended his firm’s work — and its bills.
“We don’t have clients who can pay a huge retainer,” he said. “That doesn’t mean they aren’t afforded the same level of representation. They should expect nothing less.”
Hill said he only learned about the Rotenberg abuse allegations recently, but added that “you’re going to have some success and some losses.”
For many city officials, the astronomical legal fees are a sad byproduct of a broken system.
“D.C.’s failure to master special education continues to create a lucrative industry for lawyers,” said District Council Member Tommy Wells, D-Ward 6, a former member of the D.C. Board of Education.
Federal law says children can be placed in outside schools, at public expense, if the children can prove that their local schools can’t meet their needs. Parents are allowed to bill the schools for their legal fees.
The law gives the schools 35 days to respond to a parent’s request for a special education evaluation. D.C. routinely breaks that law, leaving anxious parents facing the prospect of watching their children wallow in failing schools.
“It takes a toll financially and emotionally,” said Theresa Bollech, a part-time activist who fought to get her learning-disabled daughter, Ashley, placed in a private school. “Year after year, I’ve seen the schools fail to provide adequate programs and services.”
That’s where law firms such as Brown & Associates come in. Once the schools violate a child’s due process rights, it’s relatively easy for a savvy lawyer to prove that the child ought to be farmed outside the public system.
“It’s not that hard to figure out,” said District Council Member Phil Mendelson, D-at large. “The deadline is the same in every state. We’re just doing a miserable job of meeting it.”
The number of D.C. children referred to outside schools has risen by 131 percent since 2001. There are now 2,111 children in outside schools, which will cost the public nearly $137 million in fiscal 2008.
Brown & Associates was founded by James E. Brown, a former D.C. special education hearing officer. Brown, who lost his law license for nine years in 1981 after being accused of neglecting a client’s case, originally formed a law firm with Travis A. Murrell.
Murrell & Brown drew millions in fees for its litigation. It also tapped into millions of public dollars through its interests in Rock Creek Academy, a private school paid public money to teach D.C. public school children, and a testing service that was paid to evaluate children.
Murrell & Brown folded shortly after Congress capped legal fees for special education cases.
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