Vexatious litigant

San Diego woman makes the most of direct access to the

court system

By JUSTIN McLACHLAN

Grace Sandoval was too busy to talk.

Reached by phone, she was at Kinkos, Downtown,

making copies for a federal lawsuit she was about to file,
her 87th lawsuit in the last year.

“I first went into the small-claims court,” she explained later. “The lawsuits I have are just to
cover everything that I lost. They broke the window in my car and stole my suitcase when I was
moving. I’ve not been able to get any money.”

Who “they” are and what’s really happened to Sandoval isn’t fully known. Her complaints are
long, usually 30 to 40 pages, and often rambling. Some are handwritten, others are typed in all
capital letters. They reference everything from O.J. Simpson to Elvis Presley to the role she
believes she played in The Wizard of Oz in 1979.

Her car, a 2002 Honda Civic, comes up frequently. She told CityBeat that it’s repeatedly
vandalized by a group of criminals, a claim that made it into a legitimate bankruptcy filing
prepared for her by a lawyer in 2004. Under cause of action, she usually checks the boxes for
motor-vehicle injury or organized crime.

Suits like Sandoval’s are a consequence of a court system that gives everyone direct, and in most
cases, easy access. Karen Dalton, a spokeswoman for the San Diego Superior Court, said
Sandoval’s suits are a burden on the court and the people and businesses she sues.

“Given the current load on the court’s limited resources, this is a serious matter,” Dalton said.

Still, it took a while for someone to notice what Sandoval was doing. Between 2004 and 2006,
she filed confused and often indecipherable complaints unabated against dozens of people.

Then, she started suing Superior Court judges and clerks.

A court attorney moved to have her added to a “vexatious litigants” list in late 2006, saying in an
affidavit that her claims seemed delusional and that one of her daughters told an investigator that
Sandoval suffered from paranoid-type schizophrenia. Being placed on the vexatious litigant list
can prevent a person from filing any more suits without the help of an attorney or permission
from a judge. The idea comes with some controversy because it lets judges decide when
someone’s basic access to the courts should be cut off. Though almost every jurisdiction has a
similar list or procedure, California is one of the few places where the list is written into law and
where it applies only to people who represent themselves.

Dalton, though, said the list is necessary.

“Courts exist to enforce the rule of law and to resolve disputes. If the court is used as a forum
where inappropriate, unsubstantiated, frivolous and meritless issues are allowed to be pursued at
will, then public support for the judicial branch will be lost,” she said.

After Sandoval was placed on the list, she took a year-long break from filing suits. She started
again in 2008 and managed to file nearly 150 more cases in small claims court by the beginning
of 2009. Most were dismissed almost immediately.

Then there’s federal court. Sandoval started filing lawsuits there in late 2008, and at last count,
her tally was up to 87. More than once, she’s been threatened with fines or contempt charges, but
she persists. She said she’s prepared a half-dozen more suits that haven’t yet been filed.

One of her first federal suits last year named her daughter Corina as the defendant. The
complaint, though, was a 36-page plea for the judge to help Corina, whom Sandoval believed
was being held hostage by “heroin addicts” and other criminals.

It was the third time Sandoval had sued Corina. She’s sued her oldest daughter, Priscella, as well.

Corina said she’s offered to meet with her mother, to show her that’s she’s OK and that no one is
holding her hostage or has done any of the other things Sandoval believes are happening, but it
doesn’t help.
“She’s sent the police to my house so many times,” Corina told CityBeat.

Both daughters said they spent time in foster care growing up and that their mother spent some
time in treatment at the Aretta Crowell Center, Downtown, about 10 years ago. There, with
medication and therapy, she started to show signs of improvement. The delusions dissipated; she
could hold a normal conversation, her daughters said.

But what happened next isn’t clear. Court records show shifting addresses every few months
starting around 2001. In one filing, Sandoval said she had to move several times in one year
because people were breaking into her home and hurting her.

By 2004, she was struggling financially. According to a bankruptcy filing prepared for her by a
lawyer, expenses had overwhelmed her income. Rent was $650. The car, with insurance, topped
out at almost $500. She had thousands in credit card and student loan debt.

Then, the California Business Bureau, a collection agency working for Scripps Mercy Hospital,
sued her. They said she owed nearly $4,000 in medical bills from a 2002 hospital stay for heart
problems. Sandoval had health insurance, but it did little to protect her, paying just about 20
percent of total costs. The collection agency got a default judgment when Sandoval didn’t
respond and the bill ballooned to just under $5,500, with attorney fees and interest.

That suit was one of her first real experiences with the court system. Five months later, Sandoval
filed two of her own suits, her first as a plaintiff. The next year, she filed a few more. The year
after that, dozens. Today, she’s nearing the 300 mark with no end, as far as she’s concerned, in
sight.

Sandoval is able to explain her lawsuits and what she believes has happened to her and her
family but refuses to discuss her state of mind. Challenging her claims, like informing her that
The Wizard of Oz was made before she was born or that her daughters say they’re not in danger,
seems to infuriate her.

“You’re a part of this,” she said to a reporter. “And I need your last name, because I will file a
complaint against you.”

What will happen to Sandoval now is an open question. The federal district court is more likely
to take the same route as the state court and declare Sandoval a vexatious litigant, instead of
levying the fines or contempt charges they’ve threatened. With the courts closed to her, it’s
difficult to say where she’ll focus next.

Her daughters believe she needs more help, but without her cooperation, they’re not sure she’ll
ever get it.

“My hands are tied,” Priscella said. “Unless she’s suicidal or homicidal, nothing can be done.”
• Published: 11/24/2009
 
The quiet one
Steve Hadley, the progressive pastor, must rely on shoe
leather to beat Howard Wayne

For Steve Hadley, is boss Donna Frye a help or a hindrance? Photo by David Rolland.

By JUSTIN McLACHLAN

Wearing a soft blue tie framed by a gray suit and

white dress shirt, Steve Hadley looked the part of a
guy running for City Council: nondescript but
respectable. Sitting in front of a crowd that had
gathered in the Mission Valley library a few weeks
back, his neat, graying hair and wire-frame glasses
completed the picture.

Hadley introduced himself: He’s a former pastor who cut his political teeth in the blood-sport
events that are church board meetings. That drew a few laughs from the crowd, but, later, in an
interview withCityBeat, he acknowledged that not everyone gets the joke. Usually, those are the
same people who’ve never had the experience of picking out new sanctuary carpet by committee,
Hadley said.
Then, he took a turn most wouldn’t see coming from a man who counts time as a minister as a
defining part of his life.

“I’m also pro-choice, and I believe in marriage equality,” he told the Mission Valley crowd.

Hadley, the soft-spoken chief of staff for termed-out City Councilmember Donna Frye, whose
seat he seeks, is a low-key guy who lacks name recognition beyond City Hall. Despite being
Frye’s anointed successor—or, perhaps because of that—Hadley’s fundraising trails the other
candidates. Democratic former Assemblymember Howard Wayne is at the top with more than
$100,000 in contributions, according to the most recent campaign-finance reports, and
Republican Lorie Zapf is a distant second with about $35,000. Both also have a good amount of
cash on hand. Hadley’s campaign, though, which he’s largely self-financed, has about $7,000 in
outstanding bills and less than $2,000 in cash. In total, not counting money he’s lent himself, his
campaign has raised about $15,000.

Given the number of former City Council chiefs of staff who’ve easily followed in their bosses’
footsteps—Toni Atkins, Jim Madaffer, Ralph Inzunza, Charles Lewis and Tony Young, for
instance—it’s odd that Hadley’s not doing better.

Chris Crotty, a Democratic political consultant, said Frye’s hard-line stance against developers
and lobbyists with interests in District 6 might be hurting Hadley’s fundraising efforts: “Look at
the district: Mission Valley, Serra Mesa, Kearny Mesa, Clairemont, Linda Vista and Mission
Bay. Other than a few developers, car dealerships, hotel owners, and the Chargers, all of whom
Donna pissed off, there are no donors with an interest in what the city does.”

Hadley said he expects to make it out of the primary in June (unless one of the five candidates
gets a majority of votes, the top two will compete in a run-off in November), but it’s not going to
be an easy few months. And, he pointed out, contributions are generally down across the board,
even at the national level. So, though he admits money is important, he made the decision early
on to refocus his campaign on grassroots efforts and knocking on doors.

So, how does a progressive pastor negotiate the campaign trail?

As much as he makes it a point to tell voters he’s a pastor, he also makes it a point to tell them
that his beliefs about many social issues might not match what most churchgoers hear from the
pulpit Sunday mornings. “It’s who I am, and I don’t apologize for that,” Hadley said. “I don’t
want people thinking that I throw that out there to just get votes, because I’ve seen so many
people do that.”

Even if that were his strategy, it probably wouldn’t work, anyway. Religious conservatives
who’d normally flock to a candidate who’s been to seminary are often turned off by Hadley’s
positions on social issues. Likewise, liberals hear the label “pastor” and immediately worry that
his social-justice, everyone-is-equal mantra is little more than lip service.

Most people, though, are at least willing to hear him out.

“I think we’re at a point right now where people are actually willing to listen to who they’re
voting for,” he said.

Listen, maybe, but not always agree. Hadley said it depends on which crowd he’s with. Voters in
Hillcrest love that he supports marriage equality (but they do “like to see it’s more than just
rhetoric” first) and will look past the aversion many of them have to organized religion and
anyone associated with it. More conservative voters, like a group of older Republicans he spoke
to just before his interview with CityBeat, will also hear him out, though they tend to come with
a “How can you believe such things?” attitude and end up walking away unsatisfied with his
answers.

Hadley says his beliefs were shaped by his father, who was a pastor his entire adult life and spent
his career looking out for the little guy. “He forever favored the laity against the hierarchy, the
underdog-against-the-establishment kind of thing,” Hadley said. Watching his dad, he grew up
thinking that advocating for the rights of those who couldn’t always advocate for themselves was
just something you were supposed to do.

He tells the story of a time in Colorado when members of his church wanted to gather signatures
for a ballot initiative that would’ve repealed legal protections against discrimination of gays and
lesbians. He said no and got in “quite a verbal knock-down drag-out in a Sunday-school room.”
His decision was appealed to the church governing board, but the board saw it his way.

“I was able to persuade my board that that was just not a position we could take, and I had quite
a few people who were upset with me until the day I left because of that,” he said.

Hadley said his priorities in office would range from protecting the environment to the city’s
budget crisis, though he believes the latter will take most of his time. That’s one of the things he
hears about most from voters, and he’s got a plan that starts with reviewing the city’s consultant
contracts and cutting those costs by $60 million. Reducing the number of managers at City Hall
is a smart way to save more money, he said, and he wants to support the managed competition
for city contracts that voters have approved. He has a five-pronged plan for reforming the city’s
troubled pension system.

All that, of course, depends on getting elected.

Crotty said Hadley’s grassroots effort might save him. “Hadley’s been out there walking for
months. That’s going to generate a fairly substantial number of voters,” he said.

But, it still might not be enough to compete with Wayne’s money, especially in a midterm
primary election, where voter turnout is expected to be low. Crotty predicts that Wayne will win
the seat. He has the resources, Crotty said, to reach absentee voters at a critical time and bankroll
a radio and television campaign.

“It’s about money, money and more money,” he said.

But though Hadley’s competitors are winning the fund-raising race, he has something they don’t:
the coveted endorsement of his boss. (Frye’s termed out this year and can’t run.)

Frye endorsed Hadley after making sure that running for council was something he really wanted
to do. “I trust Steve,” she said. “I trust Steve to stay true to his core beliefs and values. I trust him
to understand what the job is. I like the fact that he’s very grounded and stands up for what he
believes in. He’s not the kind of person who’ll tell you one thing, then do another.”

Asked about Hadley’s chances in the race, Frye said that “to win, Steve has to keep doing what
he is doing: tell the truth and walk, walk, walk.”

Hadley says there’s not much daylight between his views and Frye’s, to the point that the most
accurate way to describe Hadley might be as Donna Frye 2.0.
“We pretty much agree,” he said. “That’s why I went out and worked for her. I mean, obviously,
I don’t have blonde hair, and I’m not gonna wear the flashy tennis shoes, you know, so there’s
some differences.”

Write to editor@sdcitybeat.com.
• Published: 05/04/2010
• Other Stories by Justin McLachlan