The Court of Appeals has resolved a standoff between the Rice County Board of Commissioners and the Rice County District Court, but not in a way that is likely completely to satisfy anyone for long.
It upheld the right of the District Court to appoint a private attorney in a child-protection case, and ordered the county to pay the attorney his reasonable compensation. However, it did not award the attorney damages for having to fight for his fees for nearly nine months and for having to obtain a writ of mandamus.
And while it said that a county that commences a child-protection case must pay reasonable compensation to an appointed attorney, and that the attorney does not have to be a public defender, it did not issue a peremptory writ of mandamus to order a county to approve a system for the payment of compensation in other cases.
And if that doesn’t suit the Legislature, it should change the law, the court said. “After reviewing the hearings on that bill, we are unable to identify any statement by a legislator concerning the issue of responsibility for fees incurred by attorneys representing parents in child-protection cases. To the extent that we may have misperceived the legislature’s intent, we note that the legislature meets annually and may express its intent anew. If the legislature declines to make any further laws on the subject, it is presumed to have done so with full knowledge of existing caselaw.”
The case is emblematic of the court system’s funding crisis. The public defense system represented parents in termination of parental rights cases until 2008. At that time the State Board of Public Defense, as part of a series of cost-cutting measures to deal with a $3.8 million budget deficit, announced it was ending the practice. Counties, most of which hadn’t budgeted to pay attorney fees in parental termination cases, were told they would have to rise to the occasion because the indigent parents would still be entitled to court-appointed counsel. But Minnesota counties are facing their own budget crises.
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