Local Elections : Margin Leaves Mixed Verdict for Lawyers

Sure, they won. Still, consumer attorneys didn’t feel all that warm and fuzzy as they scanned election results Wednesday morning.

In rejecting three bold justice reform initiatives, voters signaled that they wanted to retain the right to sue--to take on the jerk who bashed their car, to fight the manufacturer of the exploding gas tank, to sock it to the swindler who siphoned off their bank accounts.

But many lawyers believe voters held their noses while checking off “no” on Propositions 200, 201 and 202.

“They’re not saying they love us,” attorney Larry Feldman said. “But they see us as necessary to right wrongs,” lawyer Tom Dempsey said, finishing the thought.

“This is not a ringing success by any measure,” Century City lawyer David Hoffman said. “It shakes up each one of us.”

After all, Proposition 202, which would have capped attorneys’ contingency fees, failed by less than 140,000 votes. Not exactly a comfortable margin for the lawyers. Especially not when Tom Proulx, the millionaire software engineer who led the fund raising for all three initiatives, has vowed to renew the battle on the fall ballot.

“The fight goes through November,” Proulx said, defiant in defeat. “I don’t start a fight and walk away.”

Neither do the lawyers.

They have already written a ballot measure that would protect their right to charge whatever fees the market can bear. That clause is folded into a broader initiative to limit frivolous lawsuits and “frivolous defenses,” which the lawyers define as empty delaying tactics.

The initiative, which has qualified for the November ballot, also includes a “three strikes” provision for attorneys. Under the proposal, the state Bar Assn. would discipline any lawyer who filed three frivolous lawsuits or dredged up three frivolous defenses in civil court.

The lawyer lobby is also collecting signatures to qualify a second initiative that would expand the range of people who can be held accountable for fraud involving retirement funds.

If they are to prevail again in November, lawyers say they will have to launch a serious charm campaign. Right now, voters might tolerate them--but through clenched teeth. And that’s not good enough.

“We have to try to let people know we’re not evil, and we’re not out to take advantage of them,” attorney Steve Keifield said. Watching the close returns on Proposition 202, Keifield said he realized just how hard that will be. “At this point,” he remembers grumbling to himself, “we’re less popular than the mountain lions.”

But as the election results showed, public discontent with lawyers has its limits.

Voters crushed the proposal for no-fault auto insurance, with more than 65% turning thumbs down on a measure that would have eliminated lawsuits involving car crashes. Proposition 201, which would have made it difficult for investors to sue big corporations, also lost big--nearly 60% voted no.

Legal analyst Marc Galanter thinks the initiative backers blundered in assuming that they could tap right into an anti-lawyer current.

People may crack snide jokes about attorneys, but they stop complaining when a train bashes into their home and they need to sue for damages, or when a doctor muffs their daughter’s surgery and they sense a malpractice case. They agree with corporate executives that too many lawsuits clog the courts, but they want to make sure they have access to a trial if the need arises.

“Among business people and doctors, the hostility toward lawyers is generated by the sense that ‘they make us a target.’ . . . A lot of [middle-class voters] join them in cursing lawyers, but their complaints are along the lines that lawyers are too expensive, or that it’s too difficult to use the system,” said Galanter, a law professor who heads the Institute of Legal Studies at the University of Wisconsin.

In conducting focus groups on lawyers for the RAND Corp. think tank, researcher Deborah Hensler uncovered an ambivalence that is sure to both tempt and bedevil both sides in November’s campaign.

“People just went back and forth,” Hensler said. “They would say, ‘Lawyers are so financially sleazy, we’ve got to get rid of them’ and then someone would say, ‘But my Aunt Suzie had this happen to her,’ and they would change their minds and say, ‘You’re right, we need them.’ ”

As Tuesday’s election returns rolled in, one of the initiatives’ authors promised he would use the defeat as a springboard to victory in November. “The lawyers will go away with their arrogance magnified, and when they fall, it will be from a much greater height,” Michael Johnson said.

For their part, few lawyers took the time to gloat. They, too, focused on November.

“We dodged a bullet,” Hoffman said. “But we were all biting our nails. . . . Sure, we came up with some good ads [to secure victory], but we still have a very major education campaign ahead of us.”

Reflecting on the long road ahead--and the hard campaign behind--Dempsey said wearily: “The irony of this whole thing is, all the time, effort and money we put into it just to stay exactly where we were.”

Times correspondent Richard Winton contributed to this story.