BROKOVICH OF THE FOST CARE SYSTEM

CELEBRITY ATTORNEY DEBRA OPRI TAKES ON THE NATION'S LARGEST FOSTER CARE SYSTEM

Two separate lawsuits, one huge problem, and the impassioned litigator who is quickly becoming the Erin Brockovich of the Foster Care system

Los Angeles, CA -- Dec. 22, 2000-- The wiry 7-year-old and her timid little sister did everything they could to protect themselves from danger. They watched over one another. They demanded to be together every waking moment, to sleep in the same bed. They developed a language of their own. It was a bond only a mother could break.

Five days before Christmas 2000, their mother, LaShanda Crozier, and her husband, Davon Lewis, lost a court battle over back rent, virtually assuring the family’s eviction. The couple took their girl’s home on a bus. Then, in the dimming afternoon, Crozier brought them back to the Los Angeles County Courthouse. She marched them to the observation deck, nine stories above the Civic Center. She perched the youngsters on a granite rail. And then she pushed them."

The preceding excerpt from LittlestAngels.net details the most horrendous of many tragic events leading up to one of two lawsuits that high profile Beverly Hills attorney Debra Opri has taken on. Opri, whose celebrity client roster includes James Brown, whom she successfully represented in the much-publicized sexual harassment / wrongful termination / sexual discrimination lawsuit against the performer, has turned her attention to the murder / suicide of Crozier and her two daughters.

The passionate civil litigator doesn’t suffer injustice gladly. She’s suing the County of Los Angeles for wrongful death and negligent infliction of emotional distress. She is representing Davon Lamont Richards a.k.a. Davon Lamont Lewis, surviving husband of decedent Crozier, and sole surviving parent of decedents Breanna and Joan. As the lawsuit states, "The children were under the care, supervision, custody and / or control of the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services which negligently failed to protect them from their depressed, suicidal and violent mother...in spite of danger and warning signs."

Opri states in measured speech that barely masks her indignation over the numerous violations of the County of Los Angeles, various foster care agencies, and of the challenge to children’s basic human rights.
Yet to be determined is the dollar amount of the Davon Lewis lawsuit, as Opri asks, non-rhetorically, "What price do you give for two young children who did not have to die?"

The wrongful deaths of Breanna and Joan are an all-too-accurate barometer of a maddeningly ineffectual and rampantly corrupt system. Another of Opri’s cases underscores these issues from within the foster care system. She is representing eight plaintiffs who were former employees of the International Foster Family Agency for Foster Care. Each blew the whistle on the top officials there, and each lost their jobs as a result.

Opri states that these "whistle blowers" will provide shocking eyewitness accounts of fraud and abuse amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars diverted from children's foster care programs to personal use. In very real terms, the continued misuse of these funds in Los Angeles County is cheating children who have already been short-changed in life. And it’s not just happening in Los Angeles. Opri says it is a nationwide epidemic of catastrophic proportions.

One reporter succinctly described Opri as the Erin Brockovich of the foster care legal fight. "I feel for the children," she says, "and before they get totally lost, there’s got to be someone out there to say, 'The system’s not working. Let’s fix the system.’ Children are our future, and in the foster care system, there are a lot of children who are endangered."