Litigation
Mar. 9, 2017
Judge approves bail agents' intervention in challenge to system
An Oakland federal judge has granted a trade group representing 3,330 California bail agents a limited right to intervene in a challenge to the bail system in San Francisco.
Daily Journal Staff Writer
An Oakland federal judge has granted a trade group representing 3,330 California bail agents a limited right to intervene in a challenge to the bail system in San Francisco.
U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers granted a right of permissive intervention to the California Bail Agents Association.
This decision will allow attorneys for the group to counter arguments made by the plaintiffs in Buffin et al. v. City and County of San Francisco, 15-CV4959 (N.D. Cal., filed Oct. 28, 2015).
Gonzalez Rogers denied the association's bid to intervene as a right. Such a decision would have made the group a full party to the case.
The ruling came in response to a joint statement submitted to the court last month by the bail agents association and Equal Justice Under Law, the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that helped two women file their claim that they were charged unreasonably high bail.
Under the proposed intervention, the agents association agreed to "not expand the scope of litigation or raise new issues."
Gonzalez Rogers began her opinion with a list of the parties who have declined to defend the case: "the State of California, the City and County of San Francisco, and the California Attorney General ? The last remaining defendant, Sheriff Vicki Hennessy, has announced she will not defend this action."
However, the bail agents failed to show a "significantly protectable" interest that would allow the group to intervene as a right, Gonzalez Rogers wrote.
While the group has claimed a successful suit could undermine the use of bail across the state, Gonzalez Rogers wrote that the case challenges only a "discrete portion" of the state penal code dealing with the setting of bail schedules, not the use of bail overall.
She went on to note that the purpose of "surety bail bonds" was to provide security that a defendant would show up for court, not to "guarantee the industry's existence ? Neither the CBAA nor its members are the intended beneficiary."
Instead, Gonzalez Rogers wrote, the bail agents association will act as "zealous advocates" to ensure "two sets of well-crafted legal arguments" in the case.
"We look forward to working with the other parties to create a full record for the court, and to presenting a vigorous defense of the constitutionality of California's bail law which, as we have articulated in several court filings, we believe to be valid under long-standing U.S. Supreme Court precedent and other legal precedents," said the bail agent association's attorney," Harmeet K. Dhillon, owner of Dhillon Law Group in San Francisco.
malcolm_maclachlan@dailyjournal.com
Malcolm Maclachlan
malcolm_maclachlan@dailyjournal.com
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