Duffy Threatened Suits Against Supervisors : Law: Outgoing sheriff was upset over county’s refusal to pay his legal fees after Board of Supervisors filed suit against him, memo shows.

Five days before he left office, Sheriff John Duffy threatened to sue each member of the County Board of Supervisors for filing a lawsuit against him and refusing to pay attorney fees Duffy sought to defend himself.

In one in a series of memos exchanged between the county and Duffy during his final month in office regarding legal fees in three separate lawsuits, Duffy accused the supervisors in a Jan. 2 letter of abusing their authority and acting in “bad faith.”

He threatened to specifically ask for punitive damages against each supervisor personally because of their actions.

Duffy left office Monday after 20 years as sheriff and 38 years with the department. He was replaced by Jim Roache, a sheriff’s captain who won election in November on the platform that he would be more cooperative with county supervisors and the public in running the department.

County supervisors had sued Duffy in November to gain control over what turned out to be more than $1 million the department had earned for participating in drug raids. It was discovered that Duffy had placed the money in a secret bank account to keep county supervisors from spending it and used a portion of the money to pay attorney fees.

A week after the lawsuit was filed, Duffy requested that the county pay his legal defense. Nearly a month later, county counsel Lloyd Harmon said the board would not pay for Duffy to defend himself.

Harmon said Thursday that the board had determined that Duffy had acted “outside of his official duties” by not placing the drug funds into the county treasury. Therefore, he said, Duffy would probably have to pay for his own attorney and then sue the county to try and collect.

But Duffy argued that the board had to provide him with an attorney because he collected and spent drug funds as a county official.

“I am outraged by this ill-advised response, and consider it an abuse of discretion and an act of bad faith by each of you,” Duffy wrote in his three-page letter.

Complaining that Harmon, who also is expected to serve as the sheriff’s counsel, had waited nearly a month to respond, Duffy said Harmon “abandoned me as his client, and I intend to file a complaint against him with the State Bar Assn.”

The sheriff threatened to file suit against all five supervisors if they did not agree to find money for his legal defense by the time he left office Monday at noon. The county did not respond.

“In addition, I will ask for punitive damages to be awarded to me from each of you personally because of your obvious act of bad faith . . .” he wrote.

Duffy has not yet filed suit. His attorney, Martin J. Mayer, said this week that he is owed about $3,000 for legal work he performed in the drug-fund case.

Mayer is seeking to have Duffy dropped from the suit and have Roache, the new sheriff, replace him as defendant. Attorneys for Duffy, Roache and the county all are in the midst of deciding whether to agree to a settlement on the drug-fund matter recommended by retired Superior Court Judge William Yale.

Shortly after the county filed suit against Duffy, Superior Court Judge Harrison Hollywood ordered the sheriff to turn over the secret account.

Duffy surprised county officials by turning over $1.044 million, $61,802 of which he sent to the district attorney’s office and various city police departments that participated in drug busts with the Sheriff’s Department.

The secret account was established, Duffy said, to keep the County Board of Supervisors from spending it improperly.

Earlier in the year, Duffy had spent $70,000 in seized drug funds to pay Mayer to defend him against lawsuits by six deputies who were disciplined by Duffy for their involvement in activities of the so-called “Rambo Squad” at County Jail in El Cajon.

Mayer said he still is owed $16,000 in the “Rambo Squad” case, which the county has refused to pay.

The day after a Superior Court judge ordered the drug money frozen until the matter was resolved, then-undersheriff Richard Sandberg asked Harmon to pay $11,000 in legal fees owed to Mayer. Harmon refused and told Sandberg to pay the bill from the sheriff’s budget.

On Dec. 31, Duffy asked the county to pay Mayer from the county’s general fund and to reimburse the sheriff’s drug-fund account for all previous payments to Mayer. Duffy said Harmon had agreed to authorize payments to Mayer through the drug fund.

Harmon again refused and asked Duffy to pay the bills from his own budget.

In a third legal matter that the sheriff wanted resolved before he left office, Duffy asked county supervisors to pay $40,000 that a Superior Court jury ordered him to pay in August for firing a former deputy from a police academy teaching job.

The $40,000 in punitive damages came on top of a $200,000 verdict jurors reached the week before against the county and Duffy for firing former Sgt. John DeAngelis.

DeAngelis had maintained that Duffy fired him in retaliation for testifying at a Civil Service hearing on behalf of another deputy against the Sheriff’s Department.

In a Dec. 31 memo, Duffy asked that the county pay the $40,000 in punitive damages and said that, if he did not receive a reply before he left office, he would assume the county had agreed.

Harmon replied on Jan. 3 that the board would consider his request at its Jan. 29 meeting. The county has declined before to pay damages assessed against Duffy.

In 1988, the county stopped payment on a warrant the county issued on Duffy’s behalf to pay his legal expenses in another matter. Duffy had used on-duty deputies to distribute 18,000 anti-Rose Bird post cards.

The American Civil Liberties Union successfully sued Duffy for misusing his office, and the county ordered him to personally repay the organization’s legal fees. Duffy raised the $33,796 in attorney fees and court costs through friends.

In his letter threatening to sue the supervisors, Duffy cited the Rose Bird case as an example of the Superior Court ruling that he had acted within his role as a public official, “even though you disagreed with that assessment.”

Harmon said the court made no such determination and that supervisors were correct in forcing Duffy to pay the amount himself.